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By 

Max Heindel 




A Series of Essays on 
Practical Mysticism 



First Edition 



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THE ROSICRUCIAN FELLOWSHIP 

International Headquarters 

Mt. Ecclesia 
Oceanside, California 



L/ondon: 

L N. Fowler & Co., 7 Imperial Arcade 

Lyudgate Circus 









Copyright, 1922. 

BY 

Mrs. Max Heindel. 



FELLOWSHIP PRESS 
OCEANSIDE, CALIF. 



JAfi -c w23 



C1A6 00 88 9 



T^ottfooxb 



The contents of this book are among the last 
writings of Max Heindel, the mystic. They contain 
some of his deepest thoughts, and are the result of 
years of research and occult investigation. He, too, 
could say as did Parsifal : ' ' Through error and through 
suffering I came, through many failures and through 
countless woes. ' ' At last he was given the living water 
with which he was able to quench the spiritual thirst 
of many souls. He also developed to their depths 
pity and love, and could feel the heart throbs of suf- 
fering humanity. 

Strong souls are usually endowed with great energy 
and impulse, and through these very forces, they 
forge to the front ranks though they often suffer 
much. As a result they are filled with compassion for 
others. The writer of these lessons sacrificed his phys- 
ical body on the altar of service. 

In writing the books and monthly lessons of the 
Fellowship, in his lectures and class work, and in the 
arduous pioneer work of establishing Headquarters 
within the short span of ten years, Max Heindel ac- 
complished more than many who are blessed with per- 
fect health could have accomplished in a lifetime. His 



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first book, his masterpiece, "The Rosicrucian Cosmo-. 
Conception," was written under the direct guidance 
of the Elder Brothers of the Rose Cross. It carries a 
vital message to the world. It satisfies not alone the 
intellect, but also the heart. His "Freemasonry 
and Catholicism, ' ' has found its way into many Ma- 
sonic libraries. The occultist has received much from 
the book entitled, "The Web of Destiny," which is a 
mine of mystical knowledge and helpful occult truths. 
It is also a guide to the investigator, establishing 
danger signals for the venturesome ones who wish to 
take heaven by storm. To the science of astrology he 
has given more in a few years than has previously 
been discovered in centuries. His two valuable works, 
"Simplified Scientific Astrology" and "The Message 
of the Stars, ' ' deal largely with the spiritual and medi- 
cal aspects of astrology. The latter gives methods 
of diagnosis and healing which form a valuable 
addition to the works of other authors, both ancient 
and modern. These books may be found in the libra- 
ries of many doctors of the old school. 

In ' ' Gleanings of a Mystic ' ' are found twenty-four 
lessons which were formerly sent out to students. It 
is the wish of the writer of this introduction that these 
lessons may carry a message of love and cheer to the 
soul-hungry reader and hope to the disconsolate one. 



i* 



-Augusta Foss Heindel. 






Table of Contents 

Chapter I. 

Initiation : What It Is and Is Not — Part I. 7 

Chapter II. 

Initiation : What It Is and Is Not — Part II. 11 
Chapter III. 

The Sacrament of Communion — Part I. 21 

Chapter IV. 

The Sacrament of Communion — Part II. 28 

Chapter V. 

The Sacrament of Baptism. 37 

Chapter VI. 

The Sacrament of Marriage. 46 

Chapter VII. 

The Unpardonable Sin and Lost Souls. 54 

Chapter VIII. 

The Immaculate Conception. 61 

Chapter IX. 

The Coming Christ. 69 

Chapter X. 

The Coming Age. 77 

Chapter XI. 

Meat and Drink as Factors in Evolution. 85 



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Chapter XII. 

A Living Sacrifice. 94 

Chapter XIII. 

Magic, White and Black. 101 

Chapter XIV. 

Our Invisible Government. 108 

Chapter XV. 

Practical Precepts for Practical People. 114 

Chapter XVI. 

Sound, Silence, and Soul Growth. 121 

Chapter XVII. 

The "Mysterium Magnum" of the Rose Cross 130 
Chapter XVIII. 

Stumbling Blocks. 
Chapter XIX. 

The Lock of Upliftment. 
Chapter XX. 

The Cosmic Meaning of Easter — Part I. 
Chapter XXI. 

The Cosmic Meaning of Easter — Part II. 
Chapter XXII. _ 

The Newborn Christ. 
Chapter XXIII. 

Why I am a Rosicrucian. 
Chapter XXIV. 

The Object of the Rosicrucian Fellowship. 180 



138 



147 



153 



160 



167 



173 



Chapter I 

Initiation: What It Is and Is Not 

PART I 

IT IS NO rare occurrence to receive questions relat- 
ing to Initiation, and we are also frequently asked 
to state whether this order or that society is genuine, 
and whether the initiations they offer to all comers 
who have the price are bona fide. For that reason it 
seems necessary to write a treatise on the subject so 
that students of the Rosicrucian Fellowship may have 
an official statement for reference and guidance in > 

the future. 

In the first place let it be clearly understood that 
we consider it reprehensible to express condemnation 
of any society or order, no matter what its practices. 
It may be perfectly sincere and honest according io 
its light. We do not believe that we rise in the opin- 
ion of discriminating men and women by speaking in 
disparaging terms of others; neither are we laboring 
under the delusion that we have all the truth and other 
societies are plunged in Egyptian darkness. We 
reiterate what we have often said before, that all re- 



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8 



Gleanings op a Mystic 



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ligions have been given to mankind by the Recording 
Angels, who know the spiritual requirements of each 
class, nation, and race, and have the intelligence to 
give to each a form of worship perfectly suited to its 
particular need ; that thus Hinduism is suited to the 
Hindu, Mohammedanism to the Arab, and the Chris- 
tian religion to those born in the Western Hemisphere. 
The Mystery Schools of each religion furnish to the 
more advanced members of the race or nation em- 
bracing it a higher teaching, which, if lived, advances 
them into a higher sphere of spirituality than their 
brethren. But as the religion of the backward races 
is of a lower order than the religion of the pioneers, 
the Christian nations, so also the Mystery Teaching of 
the East is more elementary than that of the West, 
and the Hindu or Chinese Initiate is on a correspond- 
ingly lower rung of the ladder of attainment than the 
Western Mystic. Please ponder this well so that you 
may not fall a victim to misguided people who try to 
persuade others that the Christian religion is crude 
compared with oriental cults. Ever westward in the 
wake of the shining sun, the light of the world, has 
gone the star of empire, and is it not reasonable to 
suppose that the spiritual light has kept pace with 
civilization, or even preceded it as thought precedes 
action ? We hold that such is the case, that the Chris- 
tion religion is the loftiest yet given to man', and that 
to repudiate the Christian religion, esoteric or exoteric, 
for any of the older systems is analogous to preferring 



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Initiation: What It Is and Is Not 9 

the older textbooks of science to the newer ones which 
embrace discoveries to date. 

Neither are the practices of Eastern aspirants to the 
higher life to be imitated by Westerners; we refer 
particularly to the breathing exercises. They are both 
beneficial and necessary to the unfoldment of the 
Hindu, but it is otherwise with the Western aspirant. 
To him it is dangerous to practice breathing exercises 
for soul unfoldment; they will even prove subversive 
of soul growth, and they are, moreover, absolutely un- 
necessary. The reason is this : 

During involution the threefold spirit has become 
gradually incrusted in a threefold body. In the At- 
lantean Epoch man was at the nadir of materiality. 
We are just now rounding the lowest point on the arc 
of involution, and starting upward on the arc 
of evolution. At this point, then, all mankind is 
immured in this earthly prison house to such a degree 
that spiritual vibrations are almost killed. This is, of 
course, particularly true of the backward races and 
the lower classes in the Western world. The atoms in 
such backward race bodies are vibrating at an exceed- 
ingly low rate, and when in the course of time one of 
these people develops to a point where it is possible to 
further him upon the path of attainment, it is neces- 
sary to raise this vibratory pitch of the atom so that 
the vital body, which is the medium of occult growth, 
may to a certain extent be liberated from the dead- 
ening force of the physical atom. This result is at- 



> 



10 



Gleanings of a Mystic 



tained by means of breathing exercises, which in time 
accelerate the vibration of the atom, and allow the 
spiritual growth necessary to the individual to take 
place. 

These exercises may also be used by a great number 
of people in the Western world, particularly those who 
are not at all concerned about their spiritual advance- 
ment. But even among those who desire soul growth 
there are many who are not yet at the point where 
the atoms of their bodies have evolved to such a pitch 
of vibration that acceleration beyond the usual meas- 
ure would injure them. Here the breathing exercises 
would do no harm; but if given to a person who is 
really at the point where he can enter the path of 
advancement ordinarily mapped out for the Hindu's 
precocious brothers and sisters in the West, in other 
words, when he is nearly ready for Initiation and 
when he would be benefited by spiritual exercises, 
then the case is far otherwise. 

During the aeons which we have spent in evolution 
since the time when we were in Hindu bodies, our 
atoms have accelerated their vibratory pitch enor- 
mously, and as said in the case of one who is really 
nearly ready for Initiation, the pitch of vibration is 
higher than that of the average man or woman. There- 
fore he does not need breathing exercises to accelerate 
this pitch, but certain spiritual exercises suited to him 
individually which will advance him on the proper 
path. If such a person at this critical period meets 



Initiation: What It Is and Is Not 11 

some one who ignorantly or unscrupulously gives him 
breathing exercises, and if he follows the instructions 
accurately in the hope of getting quick results, he will 
get them quickly but in a manner he has not looked 
for, since the vibratory rate of the atoms in his body 
will in a very short time become accelerated to such a 
pitch that it will seem to him as if he were walking 
on air; then also an improper cleavage of the vital 
body may take place, and either consumption or in- 
sanity follows. Now please put this down where it 
will burn itself into your consciousness in letters of 
fire: Initiation is a spiritual process, and spiritual 
progress cannot be accomplished by physical means, 
but only by spiritual exercises. 

There are many orders in the West which profess 
to initiate anyone who has the price. Some of these 
orders have names closely resembling our own, and 
v/e are constantly asked by students whether they are 
affiliated with us. In order to settle this once and for 
all, please note that the Rosicrucian Fellowship has 
constantly taught that no spiritual gift may ever be 
traded for money. If you bear this in mind, you may 
know we have no connection with any order which de- 
mands money for the transference of spiritual power. 
He who has something to give of a truly spiritual nat- 
ure will not barter it for money. I received a par- 
ticular injunction to this effect from the Elder Broth- 
ers in the Rosicrucian Temple, when they told me to 
go to the English speaking world as their messenger, 



12 



Gleanings of a Mystic 



a claim I do not expect you to believe save as you see 
it justified by fruits. 

Now, however, about Initiation: What is it? Is it 
ceremony as claimed by these other orders ¥ If so, any 
order can certainly invent ceremonies of a more or less 
elaborate kind. They may by flowing robes and 
clashing swords appeal to the emotions; they may 
appeal to the sense of wonder and awe by rattling 
chains and by deep sounding gongs, and thus pro- 
duce in their members an "occult feeling." Many revel 
in the adventures and experiences of the hero in 
"The Brother of the Third Degree," thinking that 
this is surely Initiation, but I tell you that it is very 
far from being the case. No ceremony can ever give to 
any one that inward experience which constitutes 
Initiation, no matter how much is charged or how 
fearful the oaths, how awful or beautiful the cere- 
mony, or how gorgeous the robes, any more than pass- 
ing through a ceremony can convert a sinner and 
make him a saint, for conversion is to the exoteric re- 
ligionist exactly what Initiation is in the higher mys- 
ticism. Please consider this point thoroughly, and 
you will have the key to the problem. 

Do you think that any one could go to a person of 
depraved character and agree to convert him for a 
certain sum and carry out his part of the agreement ! 
Surely you know that no amount of money could 
bring about that change in a man's character. Ask a 
true convert where he got his religion and how he got 



Initiation: What It Is and Is Not 13 

it. One may tell you that he received it upon the 
road as he was walking along; another says that the 
light and the change came to him in the solitude of his 
room; another that the light struck him as it struck 
Paul upon the road to Damascus, and forced him to 
change. Every one has a different experience, but it 
is in every case an inward experience, and the outward 
manifestation of that inward experience is that it 
changes the man's whole life from the very least to 
the very greatest aspects. 

So it is also with Initiation; it is an inward expe- 
rience, entirely separate and apart from any cere- 
monial whatever, and therefore it is an absolute im- 
possibility that any one could sell it to any one else. 
Initiation changes a man's whole life. It gives 
him a confidence that he never possessed before. It 
clothes him with a mantle of authority that never can 
be taken from him. No matter what the circumstances 
in life, it sheds a light upon his whole being that is 
simply wonderful. Nor can any ceremony effect such 
a change. We therefore hold that anyone who offers 
initiation into an occult order by ceremonials to every 
one who has the price, brands himself as an imposter. 
For the true teacher, if he were approached by an 
aspirant with an offer of money for spiritual attain- 
ment would answer indignantly in the words used by 
Peter to Simon, the sorcerer, who offered him money 
for spiritual powers: "Thy silver perish with thee." 



> 



14 



Chapter II 

Initiation: What It Is and Is Not 

PART II 

TO OBTAIN a better understanding of what con- 
stitutes Initiation and what the prerequisites are, 
let the student first fix firmly in his mind the fact 
# that humanity as a whole is, slowly progressing upon 
the path of evolution, and thus very slowly, almost 
imperceptibly, attaining higher and higher states of 
consciousness. The path of evolution is a spiral when 
we regard it from the physical side only, but a lemnis- 
cate when viewed in both its physical and spiritual 
phases. (See the diagram of chemical caduceus in The 
Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, page 410.) In the lem- 
niscate, or figure 8, there are two circles which con- 
verge to a central point, which circles may be taken 
to symbolize the immortal spirit, the evolving ego. 
One of the circles signifies its life in the physical 
world from birth to death. During this span of time 
it sows a seed by every act and should reap in return 
a certain amount of experience. But as we may sow 
seed in the field and lose return on that which falls on 
stony ground, among thorns, et cetera, so also may the 
seed of opportunity be wasted because of neglect to 



Initiation: What It Is and Is Not 15 

till the soil and the life will then be barren of fruit- 
Conversely, as diligence and care in cultivation in- 
crease the productive power of garden seed enor- 
mously, so earnest application to the business of life — 
improvement of opportunities to learn life's lessons 
and extract from our environment the experience it 
holds — brings added opportunities ; and at the end of 
the life-day the ego finds itself at the door of death 
laden with the richest fruits of life. 

The objective work of physical existence over, the 
race run, and the day of action spent, the ego enters 
upon the subjective work of assimilation accomplished 
during its sojourn in the invisible worlds, which it 
traverses during the period from death to birth, sym- 
bolized by the other ring of the lemniscate. As the 
method of accomplishing this assimilation has been 
most minutely described in various parts of our litera- > 

ture, it is needless to repeat it here. Suffice it to say 
that at the time when an ego arrives at the central 
point in the lemniscate, which divides the physical 
from the psychic worlds and which we call the gate of 
birth or death according to whether the ego is enter- 
ing or leaving the realm where we, ourselves, happen 
to be at the time, it has with it an aggregate of facul- 
ties or talents acquired in all its previous lives, which 
it may then put to usury or bury during the coming 
life-day as it sees fit; but upon the use it makes of 
what it has, depends the amount of soul growth it 
makes. 



16 Gleanings of a Mystic 

If for many lives it caters mainly to the lower nat- 
ure, which lives to eat, drink, and be merry, or if it 
dreams its life away in metaphysical speculations 
upon nature and God, sedulously abstaining from all 
unnecessary action, it is gradually passed and left be- 
hind by the more active and progressive. Great com- 
panies of these idlers form what we know as " back- 
ward races"; while the active, alert, and wide-awake 
who improve a larger percentage of their opportuni- 
ties, are the pioneers. Contrary to the commonly ac- 
cepted idea, this applies also to those engaged in in- 
dustrial work. Their money-getting is only an inci- 
dent, an incentive, and entirely apart from this phase 
their work is as spiritual as or even more so than that 
of those who spend their time in prayer to the preju- 
dice of useful work. 

From what has been said, it will be clear that the 
method of soul growth as accomplished by the process 
of evolution requires action in the physical life, fol- 
lowed in the post-mortem state by a ruminating pro- 
cess, during which the lessons of life are extracted and 
thoroughly incorporated into the consciousness of the 
ego, though the experiences themselves are forgotten — 
as we forget our labor in learning the multiplication 
table, though the faculty of using it remains. 

This exceedingly slow and tedious process is per- 
fectly suited to the needs of the masses ; but there are 
some who habitually exhaust the experiences com- 
monly given, thus requiring and meriting a larger 



Initiation: What It Is and Is Not 17 

scope for their energies. Difference of temperament 
is responsible for their division into two classes. 

One class, led by their devotion to Christ, simply 
follow the dictates of the heart in their work of love 
for their fellows — beautiful characters, beacon lights 
of love in a suffering world, never actuated by selfish 
motives, always ready to forego personal comfort to 
aid others. Such were the saints; they worked as 
they prayed; they never shirked in either direction. 
Nor are they dead today. The earth would be a 
barren wilderness in spite of all its civilization did 
not their beautiful feet circle it on errands of mercy, 
were not the lives of sufferers made brighter by the 
light of hope which radiates from their beautiful 
faces. Had they but the knowledge possessed by the 
other class they would indeed outdistance all in the 
race for the Kingdom. > 

Mind is the predominating feature of the other 
class. In order to aid it in its efforts toward attain- 
ment, mystery schools were early established wherein 
the world drama was played to give the aspiring soul 
while he was entranced, answers to the questions of 
the origin and destiny of humanity. When awakened, 
he was instructed in the sacred science of how to climb 
higher by following the method of nature — which is 
God in manifestation — by sowing the seed of action, 
meditating upon the experience, and incorporating 
the essential moral to make thereby commensurate 
soul growth; also with this important feature, that 

2 



18 Gleanings of a Mystic 

whereas in the ordinary course of things a whole life 
is devoted to sowing and a whole post-mortem exist- 
ence to ruminating and incorporating the soul sub- 
stance, this cycle of a thousand years, more or less, 
may be reduced to a day, as held by the mystic maxim, 
"A day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years 
as one day." To be explicit, whatever work has been 
done during a single day, if ruminated over at night 
before crossing the neutral point between waking 
and sleeping, may thus be incorporated into the con- 
sciousness of the spirit as usable soul power. When 
that exercise is faithfully performed, the sins of each 
day thus reviewed are actually blotted out, and the 
man commences each day as if it were a new life, with 
the added soul power gained in all the preceding days 
of his probationary life. 

But! — yes, there is a great big BUT; nature is not 
to be cheated; God is not to be mocked. " Whatsoever 
a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Let no one 
think that the mere perfunctory review of the hap- 
penings of a day with perhaps the light-hearted ad- 
mission of, "I wish I had not done that," when re- 
viewing a scene where he did something palpably 
wrong, will save him from the wrath to come. When 
we pass out of the body into purgatory at death and 
the panorama of our past life unfolds in reverse order 
to show us first the effects and then the causes which 
produced them, we feel in intensified measure the pain 
we gave others ; and unless we perform our exercises 



Initiation: What It Is and Is Not 19 

in a similar manner so that we live each evening our 
hell as merited that day, acutely sensible of every 
pang we have inflicted, it will avail nothing. We must 
also endeavor to feel in the same intense manner, 
gratitude for kindness received from others, and 
approbation on account of the good we ourselves have 
done. 

Only thus are we really living the post-mortem 
existence and advancing scientifically towards the 
goal of Initiation. The greatest danger of the aspirant 
upon this path is that he may become enmeshed in the 
snare of egotism, and his only safeguard is to cultivate 
the faculties of faith, devotion, and an all-embracing 
sympathy. It is difficult, but it can be done, and 
when it has been accomplished the man or woman be- 
comes a wonderful power for good in the world. 

Now, if the student has pondered the preceding V 

argument well, he has probably grasped the analogy 
between the long cycle of evolution and the short 
cycles or steps used upon the path of preparation. It 
should be quite clear that no one can do this post- 
mortem work for him and transmit to him the result- 
ing soul growth, any more than one can eat the phys- 
ical food of another and transmit to him the susten- 
ance and growth. You think it preposterous when a 
priesthood offers to shorten the sojourn of a soul in 
purgatory. How, then, can you believe that anyone 
else can — no matter what the consideration — obviate 
the necessity of a number of purgatorial existences for 



20 Gleanings of a Mystic 

your benefit and transmit to you at once the usable 
soul power you would have acquired had you pursued 
the ordinary course of life to the day you are ready 
for Initiation? Yet this is what the offer to initiate 
a person not yet upon the threshold means. You 
must have the soul power requisite for Initiation or 
no one can initiate you. If you have it, you are upon 
the threshold by your own efforts, beholden to no one, 
and may demand Initiation as a right which none 
would dare dispute or withhold. If you have it not 
and could buy it, it would be cheap at twenty-five 
million dollars, and the man who offers it for twenty- 
five dollars is as ridiculous as his dupe. Please re- 
member that if anyone offers to initiate you into an 
occult order, no matter if he calls it ' ' Rosicrucian ' ' or 
by any other name, his demand of an initiation fee at 
once stamps him as an impostor, explanations to the 
effect that the fee is used to purchase regalia, et cetera, 
are only added evidence of the fraudulent nature of 
the order for it is said, " Initiation is most emphatic- 
ally not an outward ceremonj', but an inward expe- 
rience. " I may further add that the Elder Brothers 
of the Rose Cross in the Mystic Temple where I re- 
ceived the Light made it a condition that their sacred 
science must never be put in the balance against a 
coin. Freely had I received, and freely was I required 
to give. This injunction I have obeyed, both in spirit 
and to the letter, as all know who have had dealings 
with the Rosicrucian Fellowship. 



21 



Chapter III 
The Sacrament of Communion 
PART I 

TO OBTAIN a thorough understanding of the deep 
and far-reaching significance of the manner in 
which the Sacrament of Communion was instituted, it 
is necessary to consider the evolution of our planet 
and of composite man, also the chemistry of foods and 
their influence on humanity. For the sake of lucidity 
we will briefly recapitulate the Rosicrucian teachings 
on the various points involved. They have been given 
at length in the Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception and 
our other works. 

The Virgin Spirits, which are now mankind, com- 
menced their pilgrimage through matter in the dawn 
of time, that by the friction of concrete existence their 
latent powers might be transmuted to kinetic energy 
as usable soul power. Three successive veils of in- 
creasingly dense matter were acquired by the involv- 
ing spirits during the Saturn, Sun, and Moon Periods. 
Thus each spirit was separated from all other spirits, 
and the consciousness which could not penetrate the 
prison wall of matter and communicate with others 



V 



22 Gleanings of a Mystic 

was forced to turn inwards, and in so doing it dis- 
covered— itself. Thus self-consciousness was at- 
tained. 

A further crystallization of the before mentioned 
veils took place in the Earth Period during the 
Polarian, Hyperborean, and Lemurian Epochs. In 
the Atlantean Epoch, mind was added as a focusing 
point between spirit and body, completing the con- 
stitution of composite man, who was then equipped 
to conquer the world and generate soul power by en- 
deavor and experience, each having free will and 
choice except as limited by the laws of nature and his 
own previous acts. 

During the time man-in-the-making was thus evolv- 
ing, great creative Hierarchies guided his every step. 
Absolutely nothing was left to chance. Even the 
food he ate was chosen for him so that he might obtain 
the appropriate material wherewith to build the va- 
rious vehicles of consciousness necessary to accomplish 
the process of soul growth. The Bible mentions the 
various stages, though it misplaces Nimrod, making 
him to symbolize the Atlantean kings who lived before 
the Flood . 

In the Polarian Epoch pure mineral matter be- 
came a constituent part of man ; thus Adam was made 
of earth, that is, so far as his dense body was con- 
cerned. 

In the Hyperborean Epoch the vital body was 
added, and thus his constitution became plantlike, 



The Sacrament of Communion 23 

and Cain, the man of that time, lived on the fruits of 
the soil. 

The Lemurian Epoch saw the evolution of a desire 
body, which made man like the present animals. Then 
milk, the product of living animals, was added to 
human diet. Abel was a shepherd, but it is nowhere 
stated that he killed an animal. 

At that time mankind lived innocently and peace- 
fully in the misty atmosphere which enveloped the 
earth during the latter part of the Lemurian Epoch, as 
described in the chapter on " Baptism." Men were 
then like children under the care of a common father, 
until the mind was given to all in the beginning of 
Atlantis. Thought activity breaks down tissue which 
must be replaced; the lower and more material the 
thought, the greater the havoc and the more pressing 
the need for albumen wherewith to make quick re- 
pairs. Hence necessity, the mother of invention, in- 
augurated the loathsome practice of flesh eating, and 
so long as we continue to think along purely business 
or material lines we shall have to go on using our 
stomachs as receptacles for the decaying corpses of 
our murdered animal victims. Yet we shall see later 
that flesh food has enabled us to make the wonderful 
material progress achieved in the Western "World, 
while the vegetarian Hindus and Chinese have re- 
mained in an almost savage state. It seems sad to 
contemplate that they will be forced to follow in our 
steps and shed the blood of our fellow creatures when 



V 



24 Gleanings of a Mystic 

we shall have outgrown the barbarous practice as we 
have ceased cannibalism. 

The more spiritual we grow, the more our thoughts 
will harmonize with the rhythm of our body, and the 
less albumen will be needed to build tissue. Conse- 
quently, a vegetable diet will suffice our needs. 
Pythagoras advised abstinence from legumes to ad- 
vanced scholars because they are rich in albumen and 
apt to revive lower appetites. Let not every student 
who reads this rashly conclude to eliminate legumes 
from his diet. Most of us are not yet ready for such 
extremes; we would not even advise all students 
to abstain entirely from meat. The change should 
come from within. It may be safely stated, however, 
that most people eat entirely too much meat for their 
good ; but this is in a certain sense a digression, so we 
will revert to the further evolution of humanity in so 
far as it has a bearing upon the Sacrament of Com- 
munion. 

In due time the dense mist which enveloped the 
earth cooled, condensed, and flooded the various 
basins. The atmosphere cleared, and concurrently 
with this atmospheric change a physiological adapta- 
tion in man took place. The gill clefts which had en- 
able him to breathe in the dense water laden air 
(and which are seen in the human foetus to this day) 
gradually atrophied, and their function was taken 
over by the lungs, the pure air passing to and from 
them through the larynx. This allowed the spirit, 



The Sacrament of Communion 25 

hitherto penned up within the veil of flesh, to express 
itself in word and act. 

There in the middle of Atlantis the sun first shone 
upon man as we know him ; there he was first born 
into the world. Until then he had been under the 
absolute control of great spiritual Hierarchies, mute, 
without voice or choice in matters pertaining to his 
education, as a child is now under the control of its 
parents. 

But on the day when he finally emerged from the 
dense atmosphere of Atlantis; when he first beheld 
the mountains silhouetted in clear, sharp contours 
against the azure vault of heaven ; when he first saw 
the beauties of moor and meadow, the moving crea- 
tures, birds in the air, and his fellow man; when his 
vision was un dimmed hy the partial obscuration of the 
mist which had previously hampered perception; ^ 

above all, when he perceived himself as separate and 
apart from all others, there burst from his lips the 
glorious, triumphant cry, "i am." 

At that point he had acquired faculties which 
equipped him to enter the school of experience, the 
phenomenal world, as a free agent to learn the lessons 
of life, untrammeled save by the laws of nature, 
which are his safeguards, and the reaction of his own 
previous acts, which become destiny. 

The diet containing an excess of albumen from the 
flesh wherewith he gorged himself, taxed his liver be- 
yond capacity and clogged the system, making him 



26 Gleanings of a Mystic 

morose, sullen, and brutish. He was fast losing the 
spiritual sight which revealed to him the guardian 
angels whom he trusted, and he saw only the forms of 
animals and men. The spirits with whom he had lived 
in love and brotherhood during early Atlantis were 
obscured by the veil of flesh. It was all so strange, 
and he feared them. 

Therefore it became necessary to give him a new 
food that could aid his spirit to overpower the highly 
individualized molecules of flesh (as explained in the 
Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, chapter on Assimila- 
tion, p. 457), brace it for battle with the world, and 
spur it on to self-assertion. 

As our visible bodies composed of chemical com- 
pounds can thrive only upon chemical aliment, so it 
requires spirit to act upon spirit to aid in breaking 
up the heavy proteid and in stimulating the drooping 
human spirit. 

The emergence from flooded Atlantis, the liberation 
of humanity from the absolute rulership of visible 
superhuman guardians, their placement under the law 
of consequence and the laws of nature, and the gift of 
wine are described in the stories of Noah and Moses, 
which are different accounts of the same event. 

Both Noah and Moses led their followers through 
the water. Moses calls heaven and earth to witness 
that he has placed before them the blessing and the 
curse, exhorts them to choose the good or take the 
consequence of their actions ; then he leaves them. 



The Sacrament op Communion 27 

The phenomenon of the rainbow requires that the 
sun be near the horizon, the nearer the better ; also a 
clear atmosphere, and a dark rain cloud in the oppo- 
site quarter of the heavens. When under such con- 
ditions an observer stands with his back to the sun, 
he may see the sun's rays refracted through the rain 
drops as a rainbow. In early Atlantean times when 
there had been no rain as yet and the atmosphere was 
a warm, moist fog through which the sun appeared 
as one of our arc lamps on a foggy day, the phenom- 
enon of the rainbow was an impossibility. It could 
not have made its appearance until the mist had con- 
densed to rain, flooded the basins of the earth, and 
left the atmosphere clear as described in the story of 
Noah, which thus points to the law of alternating 
cycles that brings day and night, summer and winter, 
in unvarying sequence, and to which man is subject in V 

the present age. 

Noah cultivated the vine and provided a spirit to 
stimulate man. Thus, equipped with a composite 
constitution, a composite diet appropriate thereto, and 
divine laws to guide them, mankind were left to their 
own devices in the battle of life. 



28 



Chapter IV 

The Sacrament of Communion 
"In Remembrance of Me." 

PART II 

ffrpHE LORD JESUS, the same night in which 
JL he was betrayed took bread ; and when he had 
given thanks, he brake it and said, Take, eat; this is 
my body, which is broken for you. This do in re- 
membrance of me. After the same manner also he 
took the cup, when he had supped, saying This cup 
is the New Testament in my blood. This do ye, as oft 
as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as 
ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the 
Lord 's death till he come. Wherefore, whosoever shall 
eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord un- 
worthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood 
of the Lord .... For he that eateth and drink- 
eth unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to 
himself .... For this cause many are weak 
and sickly among you, and many sleep." — I Cor. 
11 :23-30. 

In the foregoing passages there is a deeply hidden 
esoteric meaning which is particularly obscured in the 
English translation, but in the German, Latin, and 



The Sacrament of Communion 29 

Greek, the student still has a hint as to what was 
really intended by that last parting injunction of the 
Savior to His disciples. Before examining this phase 
of the subject, let us first consider the words, "in re- 
membrance of me." We shall then perhaps be in 
better condition to understand what is meant by the 
"cup" and the "bread." 

Suppose a man from a distant country comes into 
our midst and travels about from place to place. 
Everywhere he will see small communities gathering 
around the Table of the Lord to celebrate this most 
sacred of all Christian rites, and should he ask why, 
he would be told that they do this in remembrance of 
One who lived a life nobler than any other has lived 
upon this earth ; One who was kindness and love per- 
sonified; One who was the servant of all, regardless 
of gain or loss to self. Should this stranger then > 

compare the attitude of these religious communities 
on Sunday at the celebration of this rite, with their 
civic lives during the remainder of the week, what 
would he see? 

Every one among us goes out into the world to fight 
the battle of existence. Under the law of necessity we 
forget the love which should be the ruling factor in 
Christian lives. Every man's hand is against his 
brother. Every one strives for position, wealth, and 
power that goes with these attributes. We forget on • 
Monday what we reverently remembered on Sunday, 
and all the world is poor in consequence. We also 






30 Gleanings of a Mystic 

make a distinction between the bread and wine which 
we drink at the so-called " Lord's Table," and the 
food of which we partake during the intervals be- 
tween attendance at Communion. But there is no 
warrant in the Scriptures for any such distinction, as 
anyone may see, even in the English version, by leav- 
ing out the words printed in italics which have been 
inserted by the translators to give what they thought 
was the sense of a passage. On the contrary, we are 
told that whether we eat or drink, or whatever we do, 
all should be done to the glory of God. Our every 
act should be a prayer. The perfunctory " grace" at 
meals is in reality a blasphemy, and the silent thought 
of gratitude to the Giver of daily bread is far to be 
preferred. When we remember at each meal that it 
has been drawn from the substance of the earth, which 
is the body of the indwelling Christ Spirit, we can 
properly understand how that body is being broken 
for us daily, and we can appreciate the loving kind- 
ness which prompted Him thus to give Himself for 
us; for let us also remember that there is not a mo- 
ment, day or night, that He is not suffering because 
bound to this earth. When we thus eat and thus 
realize the true situation, we are indeed declaring to 
ourselves the death of the Lord, whose spirit is groan- 
ing and travailing, waiting for the day of liberation 
when there shall be no need of such a dense environ- 
ment as we now require. 

But there is another, a greater and more wonderful 



The Sacrament of Communion 31 

mystery hidden in these words of the Christ. Richard 
"Wagner, with the rare intuition of the master musi- 
cian, sensed this idea when he sat in meditation by 
the Zurich Sea on a Good Friday, and there flashed 
into his mind the thought, ' ' What connection is there 
between the death of the Savior and the millions of 
seeds sprouting forth from the earth at this time of 
the year?" If we meditate upon that life which h 
annually poured out in the spring, we see it as some- 
thing gigantic and awe-inspiring ; a flood of life which 
transforms the globe from one of frozen death to re- 
juvenated life in a short space of time ; and the life 
which thus diffuses itself in the budding of millions 
and millions of plants is the life of the Earth Spirit. 

From that come both the wheat and the grape. They 
are the body and blood of the imprisoned Earth Spirit, 
given to sustain mankind during the present phase of 
its evolution. We repudiate the contention of people 
who claim that the world owes them a living, regard- 
less of their own efforts and without material responsi- 
bility on their part, but we nevertheless insist that 
there is a spiritual responsibility connected with the 
bread and wine given at the Lord's Supper: It must 
be eaten worthily, otherwise, under pain of ill health 
and even death. This from the ordinary manner of 
reading would seem far-fetched, but when we bring 
the light of esotericism to bear, examine other trans- 
lations of the Bible, and look at conditions in the 



V 



32 Gleanings of a Mystic 

world as we find them today, we shall see that it is 
not so far-fetched after all. 

To begin with, we must go back to the time when 
man lived under the guardianship of the angels, 
unconsciously building the body which he now uses. 
That was in ancient Lemuria. A brain was needed 
for the evolution of thought, and a larynx for 
verbal expression of the same. Therefore, half of 
the creative force was turned upwards and used 
by man to form these organs. Thus mankind be- 
came single sexed and was forced to seek a comple- 
ment when it was necessary to create a new body to 
serve as an instrument in a higher phase of evolution. 

While the act of love was consummated under the 
wise guardianship of the angels, man's existence was 
free from sorrow, pain, and death. But when, under 
the tutelage of the Lucifer Spirits, he ate of the Tree 
of Knowledge and perpetuated the race without re- 
gard for interplanetary lines of force, he transgressed 
the law, and the bodies thus formed crystallized un- 
duly, and became subject to death in a much more 
perceptible manner than had hitherto been the case. 
Thus he was forced to create new bodies more fre- 
quently as the span of life in them shortened. Celestial 
warders of the creative force drove him from the 
garden of love into the wilderness of the world, and 
he was made responsible for his actions under the 
cosmic law which governs the universe. Thus for 
ages he struggled on, seeking to work out his own sal- 



The Sacrament of Communion 33 

vation, and the earth in consequence crystallized more 
and more. 

Divine hierarchies, the Christ Spirit included, 
worked upon the earth from without as the group 
spirit guides the animals under its protectorate ; but as 
Paul truly says, none could be justified under the 
law, for under the law all sinned, and all must die. 
There is in the old covenant no hope beyond the pres- 
ent, save a foreshadowing of one who is to come and 
restore righteousness. Thus John tells us that the law 
was given by Moses, and grace came by the Lord Jesus 
Christ. But what is grace? Can grace work con- 
trary to law and abrogate it entirely? Certainly not. 
The laws of God are steadfast and sure, or the uni- 
verse would become chaos. The law of gravity keeps 
our houses in position relative to other houses, so that 
when we leave them we may know of a surety that we 
shall find them in the same place upon returning. 
Likewise all other departments in the universe are 
subject to immutable laws. 

As law, apart from love, gave birth to sin, so the 
child of law, tempered with love, is grace. Take an 
example from our concrete social conditions : We have 
laws which decree a certain penalty for a specified 
offense, and when the law is carried out, we call it 
justice. But long experience is beginning to teach us 
that justice, pure and simple, is like the Colchian 
dragon's teeth, and breeds strife and struggle in in- 
creasing measure. The criminal, so-called, remains 

3 



> 



34 Gleanings of a Mystic 

criminal and becomes more and more hardened under 
the ministrations of law; but when the milder regime 
of the present day allows one who has transgressed to 
go under suspended sentence, then he is under grace 
and not under law. Thus, also the Christian, who aims 
to follow in the Master's steps, is emancipated from 
the law of sin by grace, provided he forsake the path 
of sin. 

It was the sin of our progenitors in ancient Lemuria 
that they scattered their seed regardless of law and 
without love. But it is the privilege of the Christian 
to redeem himself by purity of life in remembrance 
of the Lord. John says, ''His seed remaineth in 
him," and this is the hidden meaning of the bread 
and wine. In the English version we read simply: 
4 * This is the cup of the New Testament," but in the 
German the word for cup is "Kelch," and in the 
Latin, "Calix," both meaning the outer covering of 
the seed pod of the flower. In the Greek we have a 
still more subtle meaning, not conveyed in other 
languages, in the word "poterion," a meaning which 
will be evident when we consider the etymology of the 
word "pot." This at once gives us the same idea as 
the chalice or calix — a receptacle; and the Latin 
"potare" (to drink) also shows that the "cup" is 
a receptacle capable of holding a fluid. Our English 
words "potent" and "impotent," meaning to possess 
or to lack virile strength, further show the meaning 






The Sacrament of Communion 35 

of this Greek word, which foreshadows the evolution 
from man to superman. 

We have already lived through a mineral, a plant, 
and an animal-like existence before becoming human 
as we are today, and beyond us lie still further evolu- 
tions where we shall approach the Divine more and 
more. It will be readily conceded that it is our 
animal passions which restrain us upon the path of 
attainment; the lower nature is constantly warring 
against the higher self. At least in those who have 
experienced a spiritual awakening, a war is being 
fought silently within, and is all the more bitter for 
being suppressed. Goethe with masterly art voiced 
that sentiment in the words of Faust, the aspiring 
soul, speaking to his more materialistic friend, Wag- 
ner: 

"Thou by one sole impulse art possessed, 

Unconscious of the other still remain. 
Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast, 

And struggle there for undivided reign. 
One, to the earth with passionate desire, 

And closely clinging organs still adheres; 
Above the mists, the other doth aspire 

With sacred ardor unto purer spheres." 

It was the knowledge of this absolute necessity of 
chastity (save when procreation is the object) upon 
the part of those who have had a spiritual awakening 



> 



36 Gleanings of a Mystic 

which dictated the words of Christ, and the Apostle 
Paul stated an esoteric truth when he said that those 
who partook of the Communion without living the 
life were in danger of sickness and death. For just as 
under a spiritual tutelage, purity of life may elevate 
the disciple wonderfully, so also unchastity has a 
much stronger effect upon his more sensitized bodies 
than upon those who are yet under the law, and have 
not became partakers of grace by the cup of the New 
Covenant. 



37 



Chapter V 

The Sacrament of Baptism 

AVING studied the esoteric significance of our 
Christian festivals, such as Christmas and 
Easter, and having also studied the doctrine of the 
Immaculate Conception, it may be well now to devote 
attention to the inner meaning of the sacraments of 
the church which are administered to the individual > 

in all Christian lands from the cradle to the grave, 
and are with him at all important points in his life 
journey. 

As soon as he has entered upon the journey of life, 
the church admits him into its fold by the rite of Bap- 
tism which is conferred upon him at a time when he 
himself is irresponsible ; later, when his mentality has 
been somewhat developed, he ratifies that contract 
and is admitted to Communion, where bread is broken 
and wine is sipped in memory of the Founder of our 
faith. Still further upon life's journey comes the 
sacrament of Marriage; and at last when the race has 
been run and the spirit again withdraws to God who 
gave it, the earth body is consigned to the dust, whence 



38 Gleanings of a Mystic 

it was derived, accompanied by the blessings of the 
church. 

In our Protestant times the spirit of protest is 
rampant in the extreme, and dissenters everywhere 
raise their voices in rebellion against the fancied 
arrogance of the priesthood and deprecate the sacra- 
ments as mere mummery. On account of that 
attitude of mind these functions have become of little 
or no effect in the life of the community ; dissensions 
have arisen even among churchmen themselves, and 
sect after sect has divorced itself from the original 
apostolic congregation. 

Despite all protests the various doctrines and sacra- 
ments of the church are, nevertheless, the very key- 
stones in the arch of evolution, for they inculcate 
morals of the loftiest nature; and even materialistic 
scientists, such as Huxley, have admitted that while 
self-protection brings about "the survival of the 
fittest" in the animal kingdom and is therefore the 
basis of animal evolution, self-sacrifice is the foster- 
ing principle of human advancement. When that is 
the case among mere mortals, we may well believe 
that it must be so to a still greater extent in the Di- 
vine Author of our being. 

Among animals might is right, but we recognize 
that the weak have a claim to the protection of the 
strong. The butterfly lays its eggs on the underside 
of a green leaf and goes off without another care for 
their well-being. In mammals the mother instinct is 



The Sacrament of Baptism 



39 



strongly developed, and we see the lioness caring for 
her cubs and ready to defend them with her life ; but 
not until the human kingdom is reached does the 
father commence to share fully in the responsibility 
as a parent. Among savages the care of the young prac- 
tically ends with attainment of physical ability to care 
for themselves, but the higher we ascend in civilization 
the longer the young receive care from their parents, 
and the more stress is laid upon mental education so 
that when maturity has been reached the battle of life 
may be fought from the mental rather than from the 
physical point of vantage ; for the further we proceed 
along the path of development the more we shall expe- 
rience the power of mind over matter. By the more 
and more prolonged self-sacrifice of parents, the race 
is becoming more delicate, but what we lose in mate- 
rial ruggedness we gain in spiritual perceptibility. 

As this faculty grows stronger and more develoned, 
the craving of the spirit immured in this earthly body 
voices itself more loudly in a demand for understand- 
ing of the spiritual side of development. Wallace and 
Darwin, Huxley and Spencer, pointed out how evolu- 
tion of form is accomplished in nature; Ernest 
Haeckel attempted to solve the riddle of the universe, 
but no one of them could satisfactorily explain away 
the Divine Author of what we see. The great goddess, 
Natural Selection, is being forsaken by one after an- 
other of her devotees as the years go by. Even Haeckel, 
"the arch materialist, in his last years showed an 



> 



40 Gleanings of a Mystic 

almost hysterical anxiety to make a place for God in 
his system, and the day will come in a not far distant 
future when science will have become as thoroughly 
religious as religion itself. The church, on the other 
hand, though still extremely conservative is neverthe- 
less slowly abandoning its autocratic dogmatism and 
becoming more scientific in its explanations. Thus in 
time we shall see the union of science and religion as 
it existed in the ancient mystery temples, and when 
that point has been reached, the doctrines and sacra- 
ments of the church will be found to rest upon im- 
mutable cosmic laws of no less importance than the 
law of gravity which maintains the marching orbs in 
their* paths around the sun. As the points of the 
equinoxes and solstices are turning points in the cyclic 
path of a planet, marked by festivals such as Christ- 
mas and Easter, so birth into the physical world, ad- 
mission to the church, to the state of matrimony, and 
finally the exit from physical life, are points in the 
cyclic path of the human spirit around its central 
source — God, which are marked by the sacraments of 
baptism, communion, marriage, and the last blessing. 
We will now consider the rite of baptism. Much has 
been said by dissenters, against the practice of taking 
an infant into church and promising for it a religion * 
life. Heated arguments concerning sprinkling versus 
plunging have resulted in division of churches. If we 
wish to obtain the true idea of baptism, we must revert 
to the early history of the human race as recorded in 



The Sacrament of Baptism 41 

the Memory of Nature. All that has ever happened 
is indelibly pictured in the ether as a moving picture 
is imprinted upon a sensitized film, which picture 
can be reproduced upon a screen at any moment. 
The pictures in the Memory of Nature may be 
viewed by the trained seer, even though millions of 
years have elapsed since the scenes there portrayed 
were enacted in life. 

When we consult that unimpeachable record it ap- 
pears that there was a time when that which is now 
our earth came out of chaos, dark and unformed, as 
the Bible states. The currents developed in this 
misty mass by spiritual agencies, generated heat, and 
the mass ignited at the time when we are told that God 
said, "Let there be light." The heat of the fiery 
mass and the cold space surrounding it generated 
moisture; the fire mist became surrounded by watei* > 

which boiled, and steam was projected into the atmos- 
phere ; thus ' ' God divided the water .... from 
the waters . . . ." — the dense water which was 
nearest the fire mist from the steam (which is water 
in suspension), as stated in the Bible. 

When water containing sediment is boiled over and 
over it deposits scale, and similarly the water sur- 
rounding our planet finally formed a crust around the 
fiery core. The Bible further informs us that a mist 
went up from the ground, and we may well conceive 
how the moisture was gradually evaporated from our 
planet in those early days. 



42 Gleanings of a Mystic 

Ancient myths are usually regarded as superstitions 
nowadays, but in reality each of them contains a great 
spiritual truth in pictorial symbols. These fantastic 
stories were given to infant humanity to teach them 
moral lessons which their newborn intellects were not 
yet fitted to receive. They were taught by myths — 
much as we teach our children by picture books and 
fables — lessons beyond their intellectual comprehen- 
sion. 

One of the greatest of these folk stories is "The 
Ring of the Niebelung", which tells of a wonderful 
treasure hidden under the waters of the Rhine. It 
was a» lump of gold in its natural state. Placed upon 
a high rock, it illuminated the entire submarine 
scenery where water nymphs sported about innocently 
in gladsome frolic. But one of the Niebelungs, im- 
bued with greed, stole the treasure, carried it out of 
the water, and fled. It was impossible for him, how- 
ever, to shape it until he had forsworn love. Then 
he fashioned it into a ring which gave him power 
over all the treasures of earth, but at the same time 
it inaugurated dissension and strife. For its sake, 
friend betrayed friend, brother slew brother, and 
everywhere it caused oppression, sorrow, sin, and 
death, until it was at last restored to the watery ele- 
ment and the earth was consumed in flames. But 
later there arose, like the new phoenix from the ashes 
of the old bird, a new heaven and a new earth where 
righteousness was re-established. 



The Sacrament of Baptism 43 

That old folk story gives a wonderful picture of 
human evolution. The name Niebelungen is derived 
from the German words, nebel (which means mist), 
and ungen (which means children). Thus the word 
Niebelungen means children of the mist, and it refers 
back to the time when humanity lived in the foggy 
atmosphere surrounding our earth at the stage in its 
development previously mentioned. There infant hu- 
manity lived in one vast brotherhood, innocent of all 
evil as the babe of today, and illuminated by the 
Universal Spirit symbolized as the Rhinegold which 
shed its light upon the water nymphs of our story. 
But in time the earth cooled more and more; the fog 
condensed and flooded depressions upon the surface 
of the earth with water ; the atmosphere cleared ; the 
eyes of man were opened and he perceived himself as 
a separate ego. Then the Universal Spirit of love 
and solidarity was superseded by egotism and self- 
seeking. 

That was the rape of the Rhinegold, and sorrow, 
sin, strife, treachery, and murder have given place to 
the childlike love which existed among humanity in 
that primal state when they dwelt in the watery 
atmosphere of long ago. Gradually this tendency is 
becoming more and more marked, and the curse of 
selfishness grows more and more apparent. "Man's 
inhumanity to man" hangs like a funeral pall over 
the earth, and must inevitably bring about destruc- 
tion of existing conditions. The whole creation is 



> 



44 Gleanings of a Mystic 

groaning and travailing, waiting for the day of re- 
demption, and the Western Beligion strikes the key- 
note of the way to attainment when it exhorts us to 
love our neighbor as we love ourselves; for then 
egotism will be abrogated for universal brotherhood 
and love. 

Therefore, when a person is admitted to the church, 
which is a spiritual institution where love and brother- 
hood are the mainsprings of action, it is appropriate 
to carry him under the waters of baptism in symbol 
of the beautiful condition of childlike innocence and 
love which prevailed when mankind dwelt under the 
mist irw that bygone period. At that time the eyes 
of infant man had not yet been opened to the mate- 
rial advantages of this world. The little child which 
is brought into the church has not yet become aware 
of the allurements of life either, and others obligate 
themselves to guide it to lead a holy life according to 
the best of their ability, because experience gained 
since the Flood has taught us that the broad way of 
the world is strewn with pain, sorrow, and disappoint- 
ment ; that only by following the straight and narrow 
way can we escape death and enter into life everlast- 
ing. 

Thus we see that there is a wonderfully deep, mystic 
significance behind the sacrament of baptism; that it 
is to remind us of the blessings attendant upon those 
who are members of a brotherhood where self-seeking 
is put into the background and where service to others 



The Sacrament of Baptism 45 

is the keynote and mainspring of action. While we 
are in the world, he is the greatest who can most suc- 
cessfully dominate others. In the church we have 
Christ's definition, "He who would he the greatest 
among you, let him be the servant of all" 



> 



4G 



Chapter VI 
The Sacrament op Marriage 

WHEN STRIPPED of nonessentials the argu- 
ment of the orthodox Christian religion may be 
said to be as follows: 

First, that tempted by the devil, our first parents 
sinned and were exiled from their previous state of 
celestial bliss, placed under the law, made subject to 
death, and became incapable of escaping by their own 
efforts. 

Second, that God so loved the world that He gave 
Christ, His only begotten Son, for its redemption and 
to establish the kingdom of heaven. Thus death will 
finally be swallowed up in immortality. 

This simple creed has provoked the smiles of 
atheists, and of the purely intellectual who have 
studied transcendental philosophies with their niceties 
of logic and argument ; and even of some among those 
who study the Western Mystery Teaching. 

Such an attitude of mind is entirely gratuitous. 
We might know that the divine leaders of mankind 
would not allow millions to continue in error for mil- 



The Sacrament of Marriage 47 

lennia. "When the "Western Mystery Teaching is 
stripped of its exceedingly illuminating explanations 
and detailed descriptions, when its basic teachings are 
stated, they are found to be in exact agreement with 
the orthodox Christian teachings. 

There was a time when mankind lived in a sinless 
state ; when sorrow, pain, and death were unknown. 
Neither is the personal tempter of Christianity a myth, 
for the Lucifer spirits may very well be said to be 
fallen angels, and their temptation of man resulted 
in focusing his consciousness upon the material phase 
of existence where he is under the law of decrepitude 
and death. Also it is truly the mission of Christ to aid 
mankind by elevating them to a more ethereal state 
where dissolution will no longer be necessary to free 
them from vehicles that have grown too hard and set 
for further use. For this is indeed a "body of death," 
where only the smallest quantity of material is really 
alive, as part of its bulk is nutrient matter that has 
not yet been assimilated, another large part is already 
on its way to elimination, and only between these two 
poles may be found the material which is thoroughly 
quickened by the spirit. 

We have in other chapters considered the sacra- 
ments of baptism and communion, sacraments that 
have to do particularly with the spirit. We will now 
seek to understand the deeper side of the sacrament 
of marriage, which has to do particularly with the 
body. Like the other sacraments the institution of 



48 



Gleanings of a Mystic 



marriage had its beginning and will also have its end. 
The commencement was described by the Christ when 
He said, ' ' Have ye not read that He which made them 
at the beginning made them male and female, and 
said: For this cause shall a man leave father 
and mother and cleave to his wife; and they 
twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no 
more twain, but one flesh." Matt. 19:4-6. He also 
indicated the end of marriage when he said : * ' In the 
resurrection they neither marry nor are given in mar- 
riage, but are as the angels of God in heaven." Matt. 
22 :30. 

In this light the logic of the teaching is apparent, 
for marriage became necessary in order that birth 
might provide new instruments to take the place of 
those which had been ruptured by death; and when 
death has once been swallowed up in immortality and 
there is no need of providing new instruments, mar- 
riage also will be unnecessary. 

Science with admirable audacity has sought to solve 
the mystery of fecundation, and has told us how 
invagination takes place in the walls of the ovary: 
how the little ovum is formed in the seclusion of its 
dark cavity; how it emerges thereform and enters the 
Fallopian tube ; is pierced by the spermatozoon of the 
male, and the nucleus of a human body is complete. 
We are thus supposed to be ' ' at the fount and origin 
of life ! ' ' But life has neither beginning nor end, and 
what science mistakenly considers the fountain of life 



The Sacrament of Marriage 49 

is really the source of death, as all that comes from 
the womb is destined sooner or later to reach the tomb. 
The marriage feast which prepares for birth, at the 
same time provides food for the insatiable jaws of 
death, and so long as marriage is necessary to genera- 
tion and birth, disintegration and death must inev- 
itably result. Therefore it is of prime importance to 
know the history of marriage, the laws and agencies 
involved, the duration of this institution, and how it 
may be transcended. 

When we obtained our vital bodies in Hyperborea, 
the sun, moon, and earth were still united, and the 
solar-lunar forces permeated each being in even meas- 
ure so that all were able to perpetuate their kind by 
buds and spores as do certain plants of today. The 
efforts of the vital body to soften the dense vehicle 
and keep it alive were not then interfered with, and 
these primal, plantlike bodies lived for ages. But man 
was then unconscious and stationary like a plant ; he 
made no effort or exertion. The addition of a desire 
body furnished incentive and desire, and conscious- 
ness resulted from the war between the vital body, 
which builds, and the. desire body, which destroys the 
dense body. 

Thus dissolution became only a question of time, 
particularly as the constructive energy of the vital 
body was also necessarily divided, one part or pole 
being used in the vital functions of the body, the other 
to replace a vehicle lost by death. But as the two 



> 



50 Gleanings of a Mystic 

poles of a magnet or dynamo are requisite to mani- 
festation, so also two single-sexed beings became neces- 
sary for generation; thus marriage and birth, were 
necessarily inaugurated to offset the effect of death. 
Death, then, is the price we pay for consciousness in 
the present world; marriage and repeated births are 
our weapons against the king of terrors until our 
constitution shall change and we become as angels. 

Please mark that it is not stated that we are to be- 
come angels, but that we are to become as angels. For 
the angels are the humanity of the Moon Period ; they 
belong to an entirely different stream of evolution, as 
different as are human spirits from those of our pres- 
ent animals. Paul states in his letter to the Hebrews 
that man was made for a little while inferior to the 
angels; he descended lower into the scale of mate- 
riality during the Earth Period, while the angels have 
never inhabited a globe denser than ether. As we 
build our bodies from the chemical constituents of the 
earth, so do the angels build theirs of ether. This sub- 
stance is the direct avenue of all life forces, and when 
man has once become as the angels and has learned to 
build his body of ether, naturally there will be no 
death and no need of marriage to bring about birth. 

But looking at marriage from another point ol 
view, looking upon it as a union of souls rather than 
as a union of the sexes, we contact the wonderful mys- 
tery of Love. Union of the sexes might serve to per- 
petuate the race, of course, but the true marriage is a 



The Sacrament of Marriage 51 

companionship of souls also, which altogether trans- 
cends sex. Yet those really able to meet upon that 
lofty plane of spiritual intimacy gladly offer their 
bodies as living sacrifices upon the altar of Love of 
the Unborn, to woo a waiting spirit into an immacu- 
lately conceived body. Thus humanity may be saved 
from the reign of death. 

This is readily apparent as soon as we consider the 
gentle action of the vital body and contrast it with 
that of the desire body in a fit of temper, where it is 
said that a man has "lost control" of himself. Under 
such conditions the muscles become tense, and nervous 
energy is expended at a suicidal rate, so that after 
such an outbreak the body may sometimes be pros- 
trated for weeks. The hardest labor brings no such 
fatigue as a fit of temper; likewise a child conceived 
in passion under the crystallizing tendencies of the 
desire nature is naturally short-lived, and it is a re- 
grettable fact that length of life is nowadays almost a 
misnomer; in view of the appalling infant mortality 
it ought to be called brevity of existence. > 

The building tendencies of the vital body, which is 
the vehicle of love, are not so easily watched, but ob- 
servation proves that contentment lengthens the life 
of any one who cultivates this quality, and we may 
safely reason that a child conceived under conditions 
of harmony and love stands a better chance of life 
than one conceived under conditions of anger, inebri- 
ety, and passion. 



52 Gleanings of a Mystic 

According to Genesis it was said to the woman, 
"In sorrow shalt thou bear children," and it has al- 
ways been a sore puzzle to Bible commentators what 
logical connection there may be between the eating of 
fruit and the pains of parturition. But when we 
understand the chaste references of the Bible to the 
act of generation, the connection is readily perceived. 
While the insensitive Negro or Indian mother may 
bear her child and shortly afterward resume her 
labors in the field, the western woman, more acutely 
sensitive and of high-strung nervous temperament, is 
year by year finding it more difficult to go through 
the ordeal of motherhood, though aided by the best 
and most skilled scientific help. 

The contributory reasons are various : In the first 
place, while we are exceedingly careful in selecting 
our horses and cattle for breeding, while we insist 
upon pedigree for the animals in order that we may 
bring out the very best strain of stock upon our farms, 
we exercise no such care with respect to the selection 
of a father or mother for our children. We mate upon 
impulse and regret it at our leisure, aided by laws 
which make it all too easy to enter or leave the sacred 
bonds of matrimony. The words pronounced by min- 
ister or judge are taken to be a license for unlimited 
indulgence, as if any man-made law could license the 
contravention of the law of God. While animals mate 
only at a certain time of the year and the mother is 



The Sacrament of Marriage 53 

undisturbed during the period of pregnancy, this is 
not true of the human race. 

In view of these facts is it to be wondered at that 
we find such a dread of maternity, and is it not time 
that we seek to remedy the matter by a more sane rela- 
tion between marriage partners ? Astrology will reveal, 
the temper and tendencies of each human being; it 
will enable two people to blend their characters in. 
such a manner that a love life may be lived, and it 
will indicate the periods when interplanetary lines of 
force are most nearly conducive to painless parturi- 
tion. Thus it will enable us to draw from the bosom 
of nature, children of love, capable of living long lives 
in good health. Finally the day will come when these 
bodies will have been made so perfect in their ethereal 
purity that they may last throughout the coming Age, 
and thus make marriage superfluous. 

But if we can love now when we see one another 
"through a glass darkly," through the mask of per- 
sonality and the veil of misunderstanding, we may 
be sure that the love of soul for soul, purged of pas- 
sion in the furnace of sorrow, will be our brightest 
gem in heaven as its shadow is on earth. 



54 



Chapter VII 
The Unpardonable Sin and Lost Souls 

SOME OF OUR students have been exercised about 
the unpardonable sin, and as this subject has a 
certain connection with the subject of marriage, one 
being a sacrilege and the other a sacrament, it might 
be well to elucidate the matter from a different point 
of view than has been formerly taken in our litera- 
ture. 

First let us see what is meant by a sacrament, and 
why the rites of baptism, communion, marriage, and 
extreme unction are properly so called ; then we shall 
be in a position to understand what sacrilege is and 
why it is unpardonable. 

The Eosicrucians teach, only with more detail, the 
same doctrine that Paul preached in the 15th chapter 
of 1st Corinthians, starting at the thirty-fifth verse, 
that in addition to the body of flesh and blood we 
have a soul body, soma psuchicon, (mistranslated 
"natural" body), and a spiritual body; that each of 
these bodies is grown from a different seed atom and 
that there are three stages of unfoldment for Adam, 



The Unpardonable Sin 55 

or man. The first Adam was taken from the ground 
and was without sentient life. Soul was added to the 
second Adam ; thus he had life within, a leaven labor- 
ing to elevate the clod to God. When the potential of 
the soul extracted from the physical body has been 
raised to the spiritual, the last Adam will become a 
life giving spirit, capable of transmitting the life im- 
pulse to others directly as flame from one candle can 
be communicated to many without diminishing the 
magnitude of the original light. 

In the meantime the germ for our earthy body had 
to be properly placed in fruitful soil to grow a suit- 
able vehicle, and generative organs were provided 
from the beginning to accomplish this purpose. It is 
stated in Genesis 1 :27, that Elohim created them male 
and female. The Hebrew words are "sacre va 
n'cabah." These are names of the sex organs. Liter- 
ally translated, sacr means " bearer of the germ. " Thus 
marriage is a sacr-ament, for it opens the way for 
transmission of a physical seed atom from the father 
to the mother, and tends to preserve the race against 
the ravages of death. Baptism as a Sacrament signi- 
fies the germinal urge of the soul for the higher life. 
Holy Communion, in which we partake of bread 
(made from the seed of chaste plants), and of wine 
(the cup symbolizing the passionless seed-pod), points 
to the age to come, an age wherein it will be unneces- 
sary to transmit the seed through a father and mother, 
but where we may feed directly upon cosmic life and 



56 Gleanings of a Mystic 

thus conquer death. Finally, extreme unction is the 
sacrament which marks the loosening of the silver 
cord, and the extraction of the sacred germ, freeing 
it until it shall again be planted in another n'cabah, 
or mother. 

As the seed and ovum are the root and basis of 
racial development, it is easy to see that no sin can be 
more serious than that which abuses the creative 
function, for by that sacr-ilege we stunt future genera- 
tions and transgress against the Holy Spirit, Jehovah, 
who is warder of the creative lunar forces. His angels 
herald births, as in the cases of Isaac, John the Bap- 
tist, and Jesus. When he wanted to reward his most 
faithful follower, he promised to make his seed as 
numerous as the sands on the seashore. He also 
meted out a most terrible punishment to the Sodom- 
ites who committed sacr-ilege by misdirecting the 
seed. He even visits the sins of the fathers upon the 
children to the third and fourth generations, for 
under his regime Law reigns supreme. Man has not 
yet evolved to the point where he can respond to love. 
He requires from his enemies an eye for an eye, and 
with the same measure that he metes, it is meted unto 
him. 

Though this seems very cruel to us who are each 
day evolving more and more the faculties of love and 
mercy, we must remember that this retributive jus- 
tice relates purely to the physical body, which is 
under the laws of Nature just as much as any other 



The Unpardonable Sin 57 

chemical composition in the universe. When abuses 
have weakened it, it is incapable of fulfilling its mis- 
sion and meeting our demands in any respect, just as 
is the case with any other machinery which we have 
made from the materials around us. There are no 
miracles such as would be required to generate a 
sound and healthy body from parents who have trans- 
gressed the laws of nature by their abuses; therefore 
that sin cannot be remitted but must be expiated; 
but when time and care have restored the necessarv 
strength and vigor, the body will again perform its 
functions in a normal and healthy manner. 

Thus we understand that under the law there is no 
mercy, for mercy is dictated by love. Therefore it 
was perfectly in consonance with cosmic order when 
Christ, the Lord of Love, said that all things would 
be forgiven to men which they did against Him, as 
love is the reigning feature in His kingdom ; but what- 
soever was done contrary to the law of Jehovah must 
meet its full retribution. We cannot be sufficiently 
thankful for the wonderful religion which He gave 
us, particularly if we compare it with those under 
which less evolved peoples are now struggling. Take 
the Buddhists, for instance: grand and beautiful 
though their leader was, he saw only sorrow, a con- 
stant struggle against the laws of nature. He aimed 
to teach his followers to transcend that condition by 
perfect obedience such as that whereby we have con- 
quered the laws of electricity and other forces in 



58 Gleanings of a Mystic 

nature. The Buddhist sees nothing but the cold and 
merciless law; on the other hand, we of the Western 
World have before our eyes from the cradle to the 
grave a beautiful picture of One who said, "Come 
unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and 
I will give you rest." 

But it may be asked, "What about lost souls; are 
they a figment of the imagination also?" To this ques- 
tion may be answered, "yes," although it needs some 
qualification. We shall best understand the case if 
we go back into the history of mankind and view the 
experiences of some who have transgressed, for they 
will furnish us an example of what may happen. In 
order to establish the point properly we shall. reiterate 
a few of the Rosicrucian teachings regarding the 
genesis of the earth and of man upon it. Three great 
stages of unfoldment have preceded the present Earth 
Period. The Father is the highest Initiate of the Sat- 
urn Period, inhabiting particularly the Spiritual Sun. 
The Son, the cosmic Christ, is the highest Initiate of 
the Sun Period, inhabiting the Central Sun and guid- 
ing the planets in their orbits by a ray from Himself, 
which becomes the indwelling spirit of each planet 
when it has been sufficiently ripened to contain such 
a great Intelligence. Jehovah, the Holy Spirit, is the 
highest Initiate of the Moon Period and dwelling in 
the physical, visible sun. He is regent of the various 
moons thrown off by the different planets for the 
purpose of giving beings who have fallen behind in 



The Unpardonable Sin 59 

the march of evolution more rigid discipline under a 
firmer law, to awaken them and spur them on in the 
proper direction if possible. 

When we look into space, we perceive that some 
planets have a number of moons and others have none ; 
but as there are laggards in any large company, and 
as moons are required to aid these stragglers to re- 
trieve their lost estate if possible, we may be sure that 
these planets which have no moons now have had 
them in the past. Those Great Beings of whom the 
Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception speaks as " Lords of 
Venus" and "Lords of Mercury" were, in fact, 
stragglers from those two planets. In the dim dis- 
tant past they inhabited moons which encircled their 
respective planets, and were successful in retrieving 
their loss in a large measure under the discipline 
given them there. Later they received the oppor- 
tunity to serve the humanity of our earth, and by that 
service to secure a return to the home planet whence 
they had been exiled. They were lost under the biw, 
but redeemed by love; and thus we may infer that 
opportunities for service will also bring to other be- 
ings, who may become "lost," the opportunity to re- 
trieve the past. 

Since it may puzzle the student as to what becomes 
of the moons upon which such beings dwell for a time, 
we may say that the solar system is to be regarded as 
the body of the Great Spirit whom we call God, and as 
any growth caused by an abnormal process pains us 



60 Gleanings of a Mystic 

when it occurs in our body, so also such crystallizations 
as moons are sources of discomfort to that Great Be- 
ing. Furthermore, as our own systems endeavor to 
eliminate such abnormalities as growths, so also the 
universe endeavors to expel moons which have served 
their purpose. While the beings who have been 
exiled to a moon are there, the Planetary Spirit of t\ie 
primary planet by his care for these beings, holds the 
moon in its orbit, and we speak of his love for them 
as the Law of Attraction; but when they have re- 
turned to the parent planet, the Planetary Spirir, has 
no further interest in their cinder-like habitation. 
Then slowly the orbit of the vacated moon widens, it 
commences to disintegrate, and it is finally expelled 
into interstellar space. The asteroids are remnants 
of moons which once encircled Venus and Mercury. 
There are also other seeming moons and lunar frag- 
ments in our solar system, but the Rosicrucian Cosmo- 
Conception does not concern itself with them as they 
are outside the pale of evolution. 



Chapter VIII 
The Immaculate Conception 

THE PERIODICAL ebb and flow of the material 
and spiritual forces which invest the earth are 
the invisible causes of the physical, moral, and mental 
activities upon our globe. 

According to the hermetic axiom, "As above so 
below," a similar activity must take place in man, 
who is but a minor edition of Mother Nature. 

The animals have twenty-eight pairs of spinal 
nerves and are now in their Moon stage, perfectly at- 
tuned to the twenty-eight days in which the moon 
passes around the zodiac. In their wild state the group 
spirit regulates their mating. Therefore there is no 
overflow with them. Man, on the other hand, is in a 
transition stage ; he is too far progressed for the lunar 
vibrations for he has thirty-one pairs of spinal nerves. 
But he is not yet attuned to the solar month of thirty- 
one days, and he mates at all times of the year ; hence 
the periodical flow in woman, which under proper 
conditions is utilized to form part of the body of a 
child more perfect than its parent. Similarly, the 



62 Gleanings of a Mystic 

periodical flow in mankind becomes the sinew and 
backbone of racial advancement; and the periodical 
flow of the earth's spiritual forces, which occurs at 
Christmas, results in the birth of Saviors who from 
time to time give renewed impetus to the spiritual 
advancement of the human race. 

There are two parts to our Bible, the Old and the 
New Testaments. After briefly reciting how the 
world came into being, the former tells the story of the 
"Fall. " In view of what has been written in our 
literature we understand the Fall to have been oc- 
casioned by man's impulsive and ignorant use of the 
sex forces at times when the interplanetary rays were 
inimical to conception of the purest and best vehicles. 
Thus man became gradually imprisoned in a dense 
body crystallized by sinful passion and consequently 
an imperfect vehicle, subject to pain and death. 

Then commenced the pilgrimage through matter, 
and for millennia we have been living in this hard 
and flinty shell of body, which obscures the light of 
heaven from the spirit within. The spirit is like a 
diamond in its rough coat, and the celestial lapidaries, 
the Recording Angels, are constantly endeavoring to 
remove the coating so that the spirit may shine 
through the vehicle which it ensouls. 

When the lapidary holds the diamond to the grind- 
stone, the diamond emits a screech like a cry of paiD 
as the opaque covering is removed; but gradually by 
many successive applications to the grindstone the 



The Immaculate Conception 63 

rough diamond may become a gem of transcendent 
beauty and purity. Similarly, the celestial beings in 
charge of our evolution hold us closely to the grind- 
stone of experience. Pain and suffering result, which 
awaken the spirit sleeping within. The man hitherto 
content with material pursuits, indulgent of sense and 
sex, becomes imbued with a divine discontent which 
impels him to seek the higher life. 

The gratification of that aspiration, however, is 
not usually accomplished without a severe struggle 
upon the part of the lower nature. It was while 
wrestling thus that Paul exclaimed with all th'i 
anguish of a devout, aspiring heart : ' ' Oh wretched 
man that I am * * * The good that I would, 
I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do 

* * * I delight in the law of God after the in- 
ward man; but I see another law in my members war- 
ring against the law of my mind and bringing it into 
captivity to the law of sin which is in my members." 
(Rom. 7:19-24.) 

When the flower is crushed, its scent is liberated 
and fills the surroundings with grateful fragrance, de- 
lighting all who are fortunate enough to be near. 
Crushing blows of fate may overwhelm a man or 
woman who has reached the stage of efflorescence; 
they will but serve to bring out the sweetness of the 
nature and enhance the beauty of the soul till it shines 
with an effulgence that marks the wearer as with a 
halo. Then he is upon the path of Initiation. He is 



64 Gleanings op a Mystic 

taught how unbridled use of sex regardless of the 
stellar rays has imprisoned him in the body, how it 
fetters him, and how by the proper use of that same 
force in harmony with the stars he may gradually im- 
prove and etherealize his body and finally attain 
liberation from concrete existence. 

A shipwright cannot build a staunch oak ship from 
spruce lumber; ''men do not gather grapes of thorns ;" 
like always begets like, and an incoming ego of a pas- 
sionate nature is drawn to parents of like nature, 
where its body is conceived upon the impulse of the 
moment in a gust of passion. 

The soul who has tasted the cup of sorrow incident 
to the abuse of the creative force and has drunk to 
the dregs the bitterness thereof, will gradually seek 
parents of less and less passionate natures, until ac 
length it attains to Initiation. 

Having been taught in the process of Initiation the 
influence of the stellar rays upon parturition, the 
next body provided will be generated by Initiate par- 
ents without passion, under the constellation most 
favorable to the work which the ego contemplates. 
Therefore the Gospels (which are formulae of Initia- 
tion) commence with the account of the immaculate 
conception and end with the crucifixion, both won- 
derful ideals to which we must some time attain, for 
each of us is a Christ-in-the-making, and will some- 
time pass through both the mystic birth and the mys- 
tic death adumbrated in the Gospels. By knowledge 



The Immaculate Conception 65 

we may hasten the day, intelligently co-operating in- 
stead of as now often stupidly frustrating through 
ignorance the ends of spiritual development. 

In connection with the immaculate conception mis- 
understandings prevail at every point; the perpe+ual 
virginity of the mother even after giving birth to 
other children ; the lowly station of Joseph, the sup- 
posed foster-father, etc. We will briefly view them in 
the light of facts as revealed in the Memory of Nature : 

In some parts of Europe people of the higher classes 
are addressed as "wellborn," or even as "highwell- 
born," meaning that they are the offspring of cul- 
tured parents in high station. Such people usually 
look down with scorn upon those in modest positions. 
We have nothing against the expression "wellborn ;" 
we would that every child were well born, born to 
parents of highjuoral standing no matter what their 
station in life. }There is a virginity of soul that is in- 
dependent of the state of the body, a purity of mind 
which will carry its possessor through the act of gen- 
eration without the taint of passion and enable the 
mother to carry the unborn child under her heart in 
sexless love!) 

Previous to the time of Christ that would have 
been impossible. In the earlier stages of man 's career 
upon earth quantity was desirable and quality a minor 
consideration, hence the command was given to "go 
forth, be fruitful, and multiply." Besides, it was 
necessary that man should temporarily forget hi* 

5 



66 Gleanings of a Mystic 

spiritual nature and concentrate his energies upon 
material conditions. Indulgence of the sex passion 
furthers that object, and the desire nature was given 
full sway. Polygamy flourished, and the larger the 
number of their children, the more a man and a 
woman were honored, while barrenness was looked 
upon as the greatest possible affliction. 

In other directions the desire nature was being 
curbed by God-given laws, and obedience to divine 
commands was enforced by swift punishment of the 
transgressor, such as war, pestilence or famine. Re- 
wards for dutiful observance of the mandates of the 
law were not wanting either; the "righteous" man's 
children, his cattle and crops were numerous ; he was 
victorious over his enemies and the cup of his happi- 
ness was full. 

Later when the earth had been sufficiently peopled 
after the Atlantean Flood, polygamy became gradu- 
ally more and more obsolete, with the result that the 
quality of the bodies improved, and at the time of 
Christ the desire nature had become so far amenable 
to control in the case of the more advanced among 
humanity that the act of generation could be per- 
formed without passion, out of pure love, so that the 
child could be immaculately conceived. 

Such were the parents of Jesus. Joseph is said to 
have been a carpenter, but he was not a worker in 
wood. He was a "builder " in a higher sense. God is 
the Grand Architect of the universe. Under Him are 



■ 



The Immaculate Conception 37 

many builders of varying degrees of spiritual splendor, 
down even to those whom we know as Freemasons. All 
are engaged in building a temple without sound of 
hammer, and Joseph was no exception. 

It is sometimes asked why Initiates are always men. 
They are not; in the lower degrees there are many 
women, but when an Initiate is able to choose his sex 
he usually takes the positive masculine body, as the life 
which brought him to Initiation has spiritualized his 
vital body and made it positive under all conditions, 
so that he has then an instrument of the highest 
efficiency. 

There are times, however, when the exigencies of a 
case require a female body, such as, for instance, pro- 
viding a body of the highest type to receive an ego 
of superlatively high degree. Then a high Initiate 
may take a female body and go through the experience 
of maternity again, after perhaps having eschewed it 
for several lives, as was the case with the beautiful 
character we know as Mary of Bethlehem. 

In conclusion, then, let us remember the points 
brought out, that we are all Christs-in-the-making ; that 
sometime we must cultivate characters so spotless that 
we may be worthy to inhabit bodies that are immac- 
ulately conceived; and the sooner we commence to 
purify our minds of passionate thoughts, the sooner 
we shall attain. In the final analysis it only depends 
upon the earnestness of our purpose, the strength of 
our wills. Conditions are such now that we can live 



68 Gleanings of a Mystic 

pure lives whether married or single, and cold, sister- 
and-brother relationships are not necessary either. 

Is the life of absolute purity beyond some of us yet? 
Be not discouraged; Rome was not built in a day. 
Keep on aspiring though you fail again and again, 
for the only real failure consists in ceasing to try. 

So may God strengthen your aspirations to purity. 



69 



The Coming Christ 
Chapter IX 

WE HAVE previously seen how infant humanity 
in Atlantis lived in unity under direct guid- 
ance of divine leaders, and how they were eventually 
brought out of the water into a clear atmosphere 
where the separateness of each individual from all 
others became obvious at once. 

"God is Light" — the Light which became life in 
man. It was dim and achromatically diffused in the 
misty atmosphere of early Atlantis, as colorless as the 
air on a densely foggy day in the present age, hence 
the unity of all beings who lived in that light. But 
when man rose above the waters, when he emerged 
into the air where the godly manifestation, Light, was 
refracted in multitudinous hues, this variously colored 
light was differently absorbed by each. Thus diversity 
was inaugurated, when mankind went through the 
mighty arch of the rainbow with its variegated and 
beautiful colors. That bow may therefore be con- 
sidered an entrance gate to "the promised land," the 
world as now constituted. Here the light of God is 



70 Gleanings of a Mystic 

no longer an insipid single tint as in early Atlantis. 
The present dazzling play of color tells us that the 
watchword of the present age is segregation, and 
therefore so long as we remain in the present condi- 
tion under the law of alternating cycles, where sum- 
mer and winter, ebb and flow, succeed each other in 
unbroken sequence, so long as God's bow stands in 
the sky, an emblem of diversity, it is yet the day of 
the kingdoms of men, and the kingdom of God is 
held in abeyance. 

Nevertheless, as surely as the Edenic conditions 
upon the fire girt islands of ancient Lemuria ended in 
separation into sexes, each expressing one element of 
the creative fire, and making the union of man and 
woman as necessary to the generation of a body as is 
the union of hydrogen and oxygen to the production 
of water ; and as surely as emergence from the watery 
atmosphere of Atlantis into the airy environment of 
Aryana, the world of today, promoted further segre- 
gation into separate nations and individuals, who war 
and prey upon one another (because the sharply dif- 
ferentiated forms which they behold blind them to the 
inalienable unity of each soul with all others) ; just 
as certainly will this world condition give place to a 
"new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth 
righteousness. ' ' 

In early Atlantis we lived in the deepest basins of 
the earth where the mist was densest ; we breathed by 
means of gills and would have been unable to live in 



The Coming Christ 71 

an atmosphere such as we have now. In the course of 
time desire to explore beyond caused the invention of 
airships, which were propelled by the expansive force 
of sprouting grain. The "ark" story is a perverted 
remembrance of that fact. Those ships actually did 
founder upon mountain tops where the atmopshere 
was too rare to sustain them. Today our ships float 
upon the element in which the Atlantean ships were 
at one time immersed. We have now contrived various 
means of propulsion able to carry us over the high- 
lands of the earth which we occupy at present, and are 
commencing to reach out into the atmosphere to con- 
quer that element as we have subjected the waters; 
and as surely as our Atlantean ancestors made a high- 
way of the watery element which they breathed and 
then rose above it to live in a new element, just as 
certainly shall we conquer the air and then rise above 
it into the newly discovered element which we call 
ether. * 

Thus each age has its own peculiar conditions and 
laws ; the beings who evolve have a physiological con- 
stitution suited to the environment of that age, but 
are dominated by the nature forces then prevailing 
until they learn to conform to them. Then these 
forces become most valuable servants, as for instance, 
steam and electricity, which we have partially har- 
nessed. The law of gravity still holds us in its power- 
ful grip, although by mechanical means we are trying 
to escape into the new element. We shall at a not 



72 Gleanings of a Mystic 

distant time attain to mastery of the air, but as the 
ships of the Atlanteans foundered upon the moun- 
tains of the earth because their buoyancy was insuf- 
ficient to enable them to rise higher in the light mist 
of those altitudes, and because respiration was dif- 
ficult, so also will the increasing rarity of our present 
atmosphere prevent us from entering the ' ' new heaven 
and the new earth, ' ' which are to be the scene of the 
New Dispensation. 

Before we can reach that state, physiological as 
well as moral and spiritual changes must take place. 
The Greek text of the New Testament does not leave 
us in doubt as to this, though lack of knowledge of 
the mystery teachings prevented the translators from 
bringing it out in the English version. Did we but 
believe the Bible even as we have it, we should be 
spared many delusions and much uneasiness concern- 
ing the time of this. "Whole sects have disposed of 
their belongings in anticipation of the advent of Christ 
on a certain day, and have suffered untold privations 
afterwards. Schemers have passed themselves off as 
Christ or even as God, have married, raised families, 
and died, leaving their sons, who were supposed to be 
Christs, to fight for the kingdom. A temporal govern- 
ment was forced to banish one of these militant 
" Christs" to an island of the Mediterranean, and 
another to an Asiatic city where he is now under mili- 
tary supervision. Nor is there any sign that the fu- 



The Coming Christ 



73 



ture will lack similar claimants; rather, the sacrile- 
gious imposture is spreading. 

We may rest assured that the divine leaders of 
evolution made no mistake when they gave the Chris- 
tian Religion to the Western World — the most ad- 
vanced teaching to the most precocious among man- 
kind. It may therefore be regarded as a detriment 
when an organization undertakes to graft a Hindu 
religion (which is excellent for the people to whom 
it was divinely given) upon our people. The imported 
Hindu breathing exercises have certainly sent many 
people to insane asylums. 

If we believe Christ 's words : ' ' My kingdom is not 
of this world," {kosmos, the Greek word used for 
" world" meaning " order of things" rather than our 
planet, the earth, which is called gee,) we shall know 
better than to look for Christ today. 

"Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of 
God" any more than the gill breathing creature of 
early Atlantean times was fit to live under the natural 
conditions prevailing in the present age where "the 
kingdom of men" exists. Paul, in discussing the 
resurrection, does not say as in the English translation, 
"There is a natural body and there is a spiritual 
body. ' ' I Cor. 15 :44. He affirms that there is a 
"soma psuchicon," sl soul body, and tells in the pre- 
ceding verses how this is generated from a "seed" in 
the same way as explained in the Rosicrucian teach- 
ings. The Bible affirms that our bodies are corrupt- 



74 Gleanings of a Mystic 

ible. (It also teaches that one organ, the heart, is an 
exception. This has reference to the seed atom in the 
heart. Ps. 22:26.) Therefore our bodies must be 
changed before Christ can come. 

If these things were believed, few would run after 
impostors, and the latter would have their labors for 
their pains. But Western papers unfortunately give 
notoriety to such schemers, though regarding them 
as a joke as well they may, for it would be pre- 
posterous to believe that the great and wise Being 
who guides evolution could be so shortsighted as not 
to know that the Western World would never accept 
the scion of what it regards as a semi-barbaric race 
for its Savior. 

When preparations were made 2000 years ago, for 
the embodiment of the Savior of the world, Galilee 
was the Mecca for roving spirits. Thither flocked 
people from Asia, Africa, Greece, Italy, and all other 
parts of the world of that day. Conditions there were 
exceptionally congenial and attractive so that, as de- 
clared by various scholars who have investigated the 
matter, Galilee was as cosmopolitan as Rome itself. 
It was, in fact, the ' ' melting pot ' ' of that day. Among 
others, Joseph and Mary, the parents of Jesus, had 
emigrated from Judea to Nazareth in Galilee before 
the advent of their firstborn, and the body generated 
in that environment was different from the ordinary 
Jewish race body. 

It is an incontrovertible fact that environment playa 



w^m 



The Coming Christ 75 

a great part in evolution. We have today upon earth 
three great races. One, the Negro, has hair which is 
flat in section, and the head is long, narrow, and 
flattened on the sides. The orbit of the eye is also 
long and narrow. The Negroes are descendants of 
the Lemurian Race. 

The Mongols and kindred peoples have round heads. 
Their hair is round in section, and the orbits of their 
eyes are also round. They are the remnants of the 
Atlantean Race. 

The Aryan Race have oval hair, oval skulls, and 
oval orbits of the eyes, these features being especially 
pronounced in the Anglo-Saxons, who are the flower 
of the race at present. 

In America, the Mecca of nations today, these 
various races are of course represented. Here is the 
'■ melting pot" in which they are being amalgamated. 
It has been ascertained that here there is a difference 
in children belonging to the same family. The skulls 
of younger children horn in America are more nearly 
oval than the heads of their older brothers and sisters 
born abroad. 

From this fact and from others which need not be 
mentioned here, it is evident that a new race is being 
born on the American continent; and reasoning from 
the known fact that the Christ came from the most 
cosmopolitan part of the civilized world of 2000 
years ago, it would be but logical to expect that if a 
new embodiment were sought for that exalted Being, 



76 Gleanings of a Mystic 

His body would more likely be taken from the new 
race than from an ancient one. Otherwise, if 
there is virtue in obtaining a Savior from the older 
races, why not got a Bushman or a Hottentot 1 

But we may be sure that though impostors deceive 
for a time, they are found out sooner or later, and 
their plans come to naught. Meanwhile, progression 
continues to bring us nearer the Aquarian Age, and 
a Teacher is coming to give the Christian Religion 
impetus in a new direction. 



77 



Chapter X 
The Coming Age 

WHEN WE speak of the " Coming Age," of the 
"New Heaven and the New Earth" mentioned 
in the Bible, and also of the "Aquarian Age," the 
differences may not be quite clear in the minds of 
our students. Confusion of terms is one of the most 
fertile seed grounds of fallacy, and the Rosicrucian 
teachings aim to avoid it by a particularly definite 
nomenclature. Sometimes an extra effort seems neces- 
sary to disperse the haze engendered by current 
cloudy conceptions of others as sincere as the present 
writer, but not so fortunate in having access to the 
incomparable Western Wisdom Teachings. 

It has been taught in our literature that four great 
epochs of unfoldment preceded the present order of 
things ; that the density of the earth, its atmospheric 
conditions, and the laws of nature prevailing in one 
epoch were as different from those of the other epochs 
as was the corresponding physiological constitution 
of mankind in one epoch different from those in the 
others. 






The bodies of ADM (the name means red earth), 

the humanity of fiezy Lemuria, were formed of the 

ground," the red, hot, volcanic mud, 

suited to their environment. Flesh and 

blizz ~:zli -i~i szr. f. e-i zz zz :zf :frr::lf 'z.nz :: 
that day, and though suited to present conditions, 
Paul tells us that they cannot inherit the Kingdom 

:: ;r_-.i I: z i_i:i: :t zz z~ -fii :z:i :i: rf : Zt~ 
irifr : ~?z" izz: ":f zzizzzzziiri. :_t t_-zzzz zzzl 
zzszizz :z :: zii~ -— f. zzzsi :e niizLlv izizzzzl :: 
5:7 znzizr :: :zr stzzi zzl irrinie Aiizi ~zii :? 
rf-:*iir-ri :: :f-TiT:^7 :ze — zz-r zzz:zz nic ^1: z: 
iziz: :: z~f zz f:-?:::. : : HtS 

1 _ ±i t: lies : nf~ izzrzzizi 

::~r zziz tZ15Itz:t zz i zzizzzzz .1 zz: ; 

;.:t T""/-fi :::::::: friz: zie szzzllzs: zz: zi:si rnzzz 
-: z'rrzzzzzzs ~-z :zf zzisi :: ^z-iz ::~. 
czzzri i : i~ z- = : l_ t i z? firrzir 

ir-es ,1:, zz— zziz-rs Tz- -iz.l-ri zz :ze 

— z:-:_t- _ _Zt "_r rrizusri Izzi — zs :Zr::- 
..:---: 1 zs zzi i: zze =zzze zzzc izeir 
j: _ zzz zizrs ^T7i :.":z: zzfzz :i „~t zzizr 7:7 



7—; zzz : :::t: — t^ i :z iz lie zzszzi if Z: ririz 
z if finis iriTr tzzz: :zi :.::.• 
iz if :z ;lzi- 1: zz- :zzf ~zzi 

z "ii: z z: 1: 

ri:i :.. ,, ill: ?li:: "17 zi Iz—ziz pr:^:? 



The Coming Age 79 

Thus we see there is no sudden change of constitution 
or environment for the whole human race when a new 
epoch is ushered in, but an overlapping of conditions 
which makes it possible for most of the race by 
gradual adjustment to enter the new condition, though 
the change may seem sudden to the individual when 
the preparatory change has been accomplished uncon- 
sciously. The metamorphosis of a tadpole from a 
denizen of the watery element to one of the airy 
gives an analogy of the past, and the transformation 
of the earthworm to a butterfly soaring in the air is an 
apt simile of the coming age. When the heavenly 
time marker came into Aries by precession, a new 
cycle commenced, and the "glad tidings" were 
preached by Christ. He said by implication that the 
new heaven and earth were not ready then when He 
told His disciples : Whither I go you cannot now fol- 
low, but you shall follow afterwards. I go to prepare 
a place for you and will come again and receive you. 

Later John saw in a vision the new Jerusalem 
descending from heaven, and Paul taught the Thes- 
salonians "by the word of the Lord" that those who 
are Christs at His coming shall be caught up in the 
air to meet Him and be with Him for the age. 

But during this change there are pioneers who enter 
the kingdom of God before their brethren. Christ, in 
Matt. 11:12, said that "the kingdom of heaven suf- 
fereth violence, and the violent take it by force." 
This is not a correct translation. It ought to be : Tho 



80 Gleanings op a Mystic 

kingdom of the heavens has been invaded (Maxetai), 
and invaders seize on her. Men and women have al- 
ready learned through holy, helpful lives to lay aside 
the body of flesh and blood, either intermittently or 
permanently, and to walk the skies with winged feet, 
intent upon the business of their Lord, clad in the 
ethereal ''wedding garment" of the new dispensation. 
This change may be accomplished through a life of 
simple helpfulness and prayer as practiced by devoted 
Christians, no matter with what church they affiliate, 
as well as by the specific exercises given in the Rosi- 
crucian Fellowship. The latter will prove barren of 
results, unless accompanied by constant acts of love 
for love will be the keynote of the coming age as Law 
is of the present order. The intense expression of the 
former quality increases the phosphorescent luminos- 
ity and density of the ethers in our vital bodies, the 
fiery streams sever the tie to the mortal coil, and the 
man, onoe born of water upon his emergence from 
Atlantis, is now born of the spirit into the kingdom 
of God. The dynamic force of his love has opened a 
way to the land of love, and indescribable is the re- 
joicing among those already there when new invaders 
arrive, for each new arrival hastens the coming of the 
Lord and the definite establishment of the Kingdom. 
Among the religiously inclined there is a definite 
unceasing cry: How long, Lord; how long? And 
despite the emphatic statement of Christ that the day 
and hour are unknown, even to Himself, prophets con- 



The Coming Age 81 

tinue to gain credence when they predict His coming 
on a certain day, though each is discomfited when the 
day passes without development. The question has 
also been mooted among our students, and the present 
chapter is an attempt to show the fallacy of looking for 
the Second Advent in a year or fifty or five hundred. 
The Elder Brothers decline to commit themselves 
further than to point out what must first be accom- 
plished. 

At the time of Christ the sun was in about seven 
degrees of Aries. Five hundred years were required 
to bring the precession to the thirtieth degree of Pisces. 
During that time the new church lived through a 
stage of offensive and defensive violence well justify- 
ing the words of Christ : ' * I came not to bring peace 
but a sword." Fourteen hundred years more have 
elapsed under the negative influence of Pisces, which 
has fostered the power of the church and bound the 
people by creed and dogma. 

In the middle of the last century the sun came 
within orb of influence of the scientific sign Aquarius, 
and although it will take about six hundred years be- 
fore the Aquarian Age commences, it is highly instruc- 
tive to note what changes the mere touch has wrought 
in the. world. Our limited space precludes enumera- 
tion of the wonderful advances made since then; but 
it is not too much to say that science, invention, and 
resultant industry have completely changed the 
world, its social life, and economic conditions. Tho 

6 



82 Gleanings of a Mystic 

great strides made in means of communication have 
done much to break down barriers of race prejudice 
and prepare us for conditions of Universal Brother- 
hood. Engines of destruction have been made so 
fearfully efficient that the militant nations will be 
forced ere long to "beat their swords into plowshares 
and their spears into pruning hooks." The sword has 
had its reign during the Piscean Age, but science will 
rule in the Aquarian Age. 

In the land of the setting sun we may expect to first 
see the ideal conditions of the Aquarian Age : A blend- 
ing of religion and science, forming a religious science 
and a scientific religion, which will promote the 
health, happiness and the enjoyment of life in abund- 
ant measure. 

Sugar For Alcohol 

In the chapter elucidating the Law of Assimilation 
in the Bosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, we stated that 
minerals cannot be assimilated because they lack a 
vital body, which lack makes it impossible for man to 
raise their vibratory rate to his own pitch. Plants 
have a vital body and no self-consciousness, hence are 
most easily assimilated and remain with man longer 
than cells of animal flesh, which is permeated by a 
desire body. The vibratory rate of the latter is high, 
and much energy is required in assimilation ; its cells 
also quickly escape and make it necessary for the 
flesh eater to forage often. 



The Coming Age 83 

We are aware that alcohol is a il foreign spirit" 
and a " spirit of decay," because it is generated by 
fermentation outside the consumer's system. Being 
" spirit," it vibrates with such intense rapidity that 
the human spirit is incapable of tuning it down and 
controlling it as food must be, hence metabolism is out 
of the question. Nay, more, as we cannot reduce its 
vibratory rate to that of our bodies, this foreign spirit 
may accelerate their vibratory pitch and control us as 
happens in the state of intoxication. Thus alcohol is 
a great danger to mankind and one from which we 
must be emancipated ere we can realize our divine 
nature. 

A stimulant spirit is necessary while we live on a 
diet of flesh or progress would stop, and a food has 
been provided for the pioneers of the West that an- 
swers all requirements; its name is "sugar." From 
sugar the ego itself generates alcohol inside the sys- 
tem by the very processes of metabolism. This product 
is therefore both food and stimulant, perfectly keyed 
to the vibratory pitch of the body. It has all the good 
qualities of alcohol in enhanced measure and none of 
its drawbacks. To perceive properly the effect of this 
food, consider the peoples of eastern Europe where 
but little sugar is consumed. They are slavish; they 
speak of themselves in terms of depreciation ; the pro- 
noun "I" is always spelled with small letters but 
"you" with a capital. England consumes five times 
as much sugar per capita as Russia. In the former 



84 



Gleanings of a Mystic 



we meet a different spirit, the big "I" and the little 
"you." In America the candy store becomes a most 
dangerous rival of the saloon, for the man who eats 
sweets will not drink, and there is no surer cure for 
alcoholism than to induce the sufferer to eat freely of 
sweets. The drunkard abhors sugar, however, while 
his system is under the sway of the "foreign spirit. ,, 
The temperance movement was begun in the land 
where most sugar is consumed, and has generated "the 
spirit of self -respect." 



85 



Chapter XI 
Meat and Drink as Factors In Evolution 

IN PREVIOUS chapters we saw how infant hu- 
manity was cared for by superhuman guardians, 
provided with appropriate food, led out of danger's 
way, and sheltered in all respects until grown to 
human stature and fit to enter the school of expe- 
rience to learn the lessons of life in the phenomenal 
world. We saw also how the rainbow points to nat- 
ural laws peculiar to the present age, how man was 
given free will under these laws, and how the spirit 
of wine was given to cheer and to stimulate his own 
timid, fearful spirit, to nerve it for the war of the 
world. 

In an analogous manner the irresponsible little 
child who has been brought under the waters of bap- 
tism by its natural guardians is cared for through the 
years of childhood while its various vehicles are being 
organized. When the parental blood stored in the 
thymus gland has been exhausted and the child thus 
emancipated from the parents, it awakes to individu- 
ality, to the feeling of ' * I AM. ' ' It has then been pre- 



86 Gleanings of a Mystic 

pared with a knowledge of good and evil with which 
to fight the battle of life ; and at that time the youth 
is taken to the church and given the bread and wine 
to nerve and nourish him spiritually, also as a symbol 
that henceforth he is a free agent, only responsible to 
the laws of God. A blessing or a curse, this freedom, 
according to the way it is used. 

In early Atlantis mankind was a universal brother- 
hood of submissive children with no incentive to war 
or strife. Later they were segregated into nations, 
and wars inculcated loyalty to kin and country. Each 
sovereign was an absolute autocrat with power over 
life and limb of his subjects, who were numbered in 
hundreds of millions, and who yielded ungrudging 
and slavish submission, an attitude maintained to the 
present day among the millions of Asiatics, who are 
vegetarians and consequently need no alcohol. 

As flesh eating came into vogue, wine became a 
more and more common beverage. In consequence of 
flesh eating much material progress was made imme- 
diately preceding the advent of Christ, and because of 
the practice of drinking wine an increasing number of 
men asserted themselves as leaders, with the result 
that instead of a few large nations such as people 
Asia, many small nations were formed in the south- 
western portion of Europe and Asia Minor. 

But though the great mass of people who formed 
these various nations were ahead of their Asiatic 
brethren as craftsmen, they continued submissive to 



m 



Meat and Drink 87 

their rulers and lived as much in their traditions as 
did the latter. Christ upbraided them because they 
gloried in being Abraham's seed. He told them that 
"before Abraham was, i am/' that is, the ego has al- 
ways existed. 

It is His mission to emancipate humanity from 
Law and lead it to love, to destroy "the kingdoms of 
men" with all their antagonism to one another, and 
to build upon their ruins "the kingdom of God." An 
illustration will make the method clear: 

If we have a number of brick buildings and desire 
to amalgamate them into one large structure, it is 
necessary to break them down first and free each 
brick from the mortar which binds it. Likewise each 
human being must be freed from the fetters of family, 
hence Christ taught "Unless a man leave father and 
mother he cannot be my disciple." He must outgrow 
religious partisanship and patriotism and learn to 
say with the much misunderstood and maligned 
Thomas Paine: "The world is my country, and to do 
good is my religion/' 

Christ did not mean that we are to forsake those 
who have a claim upon our help and support, but that 
we are not to permit the suppression of our individu- 
ality out of deference to family traditions and beliefs. 

Consequently He came "not to bring peace, but a 
sword ; ' ' and whereas the eastern religions discourage 
the use of wine, Christ's first miracle was to change 
water to wine. The sword and the wine cup are 



88 Gleanings of a Mystic 

signatures of the Christian religion, for by them na- 
tions have been broken to pieces and the individual 
emancipated. Government by the people, for the peo- 
ple, is a fact in northwestern Europe, the rulers being 
that principally in name only. 

But the fostering of the martial spirit such as pre- 
vails in Europe was only a means to an end. The seg- 
regation which it has caused must give place to a 
regime of brotherhood such as professed by Paine. A 
new step was necessary to bring this about ; a new food 
must be found which would act upon the spirit in 
such a way as to foster individuality through assertioii 
of self without oppression of others and without loss 
of self-respect. We have enunciated it as a law that 
only spirit can act upon spirit, and therefore that 
food must be a spirit but differing in other respects 
from intoxicants. 

Before describing this let us see what flesh has done 
for the evolution of the world. 

We have noted previously that during the Polarian 
Epoch man had only a dense body; he was like the 
present minerals in this respect, and by nature he was 
as inert and passive. 

By absorbing the crystalloids prepared by plants 
he evolved a vital body during the Hyperborean 
Epoch and became plant-like both in constitution and 
by nature, for he lived without exertion and as un- 
consciously as the plants. 

Later he extracted milk from the then stationary 



Meat and Drink 89 

animals. Desire for this more readily digestible food 
spurred him on to exertion, and gradually his desire 
nature was evolved during the Lemurian Epoch. Thus 
he became constituted like the present day Herbivora. 
Though possessed of a passional nature, he was docile 
and could not be induced to fight save to defend him- 
self, his mate, and family. Hunger alone had the 
power to make him aggressive. 

Therefore, when animals began to move and sought 
to elude this ruthless parasite, increasing difficulty of 
obtaining the coveted food aroused his craving to such 
an extent that when he had hunted and caught an 
animal, he was no longer content to suck its udders 
dry but commenced to feed upon its blood and flesh. 
Thus he became as ferocious as our present day 
Carnivora. 

Digestion of flesh food requires much more power- 
ful chemical action and speedy elimination of the 
waste than that of a vegetable diet as proved by 
chemical analysis of the gastric juices from animals, 
and by the fact that the intestines of Herbivora are 
many times longer than those of a carnivorous animal 
of even size. Carnivora easily become drowsy and 
averse to exertion. 

When prodded by the pangs of hunger the ferocious 
wolf does indeed pursue its prey with unwavering 
perseverance, and the spring of the crouching king of 
beasts overmatches the speed of the wing-footed deer. 
By ambush the feline family foil the fleetest in their 



90 Gleanings of a Mystic 

attempts to escape. The cunning of the fox is 
proverbial, and the slinking nocturnal habits of the 
hyena and kindred scavengers illustrate the depth of 
depravity resulting from a diet of decayed flesh. 

The vices generated by flesh eating may be said 
to be lassitude, ferocity, low cunning, and depravity. 
We may tame the herbivorous ox and elephant. Their 
diet makes them docile and stores enormous power 
which they obediently use in our service to perform 
prolonged and arduous labor. The flesh food required 
by the constitutional peculiarities of Carnivora makes 
them dangerous and incapable of thorough domestica- 
tion. A cat may scratch at any moment, and the 
muzzling ordinances of large cities are ample proof 
of the danger of dogs. Besides, energy contained in 
the diet of Carnivora is so largely expended in diges- 
tion that they are drowsy and unfitted for sustained 
labor like the horse or elephant. 

The drowsiness following a heavy meal of meat is 
too well known to require argument, and the custom 
of taking stimulants with food is an outgrowth of the 
desire to counteract the deadening effect of dead 
flesh. The intensified effect of feasting upon flesh in 
an advanced state of decay is well illustrated in 
" society," where banquets of game that is "high" 
are accompanied by orgies of the wildest nature and 
followed by indulgence of the vilest instincts. 

The Westerner who can live upon a clean, sweet, 
wholesome diet of vegetables, cereals, and fruits, does 



Meat and Drink 91 

not become drowsy from his food ; he needs no stimu- 
lant. There are no vegetarian drunkards. The sooth- 
ing effects of vegetable food manifest as finer feelings, 
which replace the ferocity fostered by flesh food. 
Many need the mixed diet yet, for the practice of 
flesh eating has furthered the progress of the world 
as nothing else except perhaps its companion vice— - 
drunkenness; and though we cannot say that they 
have been blessings in disguise, they have at least not 
been unmitigated curses, for in the Father's kingdom 
all seeming evil nevertheless works for good in some 
respect, though it may not be apparent upon the 
surface. We shall see how presently. 

A private corporation, the East India Company, 
commenced and practically achieved the subjugation 
of India with her three hundred million people, for 
the English are voracious flesh eaters, while the 
Hindu's diet fosters docility. But when England 
fought the flesh eating Boers, Greek met Greek, and 
the valor displayed by both sides is a matter of bril- 
liant record. Courage, physical as well as moral, is 
a virtue and cowardice a vice. Flesh has fostered self- 
assertion and helped us to develop a backbone, though 
unfortunately often at the expense of others who still 
retain the wishbone. It has done more as will be 
illustrated : 

As said previously, the crouching cat is forced to 
employ strategy to save strength when procuring its 
prey, so that it may retain sufficient energy to digest 



X 



92 Gleanings op a Mystic 

the victim. Thus brain becomes the ally of brawn. 
In ancient Atlantis desire for flesh developed the in- 
genuity of primitive man and led him to trap the 
elusive denizens of field and forest. The hunter's 
snare was among the first labor-saving devices — 
which mark the beginning of the evolution of mind, 
and of the uncompromising, unflagging struggle of 
the meat fed mind for supremacy over matter. 

We say i( the meat fed mind," and we reiterate it, 
because we wish to emphasize that it is by the nations 
which have adopted flesh food that the most note- 
worthy progress has been made. The vegetarian 
Asiatics remain upon the lower rungs of civilization. 
The further west we travel, the more the consumption 
of meat increases as does the disinclination for bodily 
exercise, and consequently the activity of the mind is 
increased to a higher and higher pitch in the invention 
of labor-saving devices. The American agriculturists' 
acres are counted by thousands, and they harvest 
large crops with less labor than the peasant of the 
East who has only a small patch of ground. The reason 
is that the poor, plodding, grain fed Easterner has 
only his hands and his hoe, which he keeps in motion 
all day and day after day, while the meat fed, pro- 
gressive Westerner turns power-driven implements 
into his fertile fields and sits down in a comfortable 
seat to watch them work. One uses muscle, the other 
mind. 



Meat and Drink 



93 



Thus the indomitable courage and energy which 
have transformed the face of the Western World are 
virtues directly traceable to flesh food, which also 
fosters love of ease and invention of labor-saving de- 
vices ; while alcohol stimulates enterprise in execution 
of schemes thus hatched to procure the maximum of 
comfort with a minimum of labor. 

But the spirit of alcohol is obtained by a process of 
fermentation. It is a spirit of decay, altogether dif- 
ferent from the spirit of life in man. This counter- 
feit spirit lures man on and on, always holding before 
his vision dreams of future grandeur, and goading 
him to strenuous efforts of body and mind in order 
to attain and obtain. Then when he has achieved and 
attained, he awakens to the utter worthlessness of his 
prize. Possession soon shatters illusion as to the worth 
of whatever he may have acquired ; nothing the world 
has to give can finally satisfy. Then again the lethal 
draught drowns disappoinment, and the mind con- 
jures up a new illusion. This he pursues with fresh 
zeal and high hopes to meet disappointment again and 
again, for lives and lives, until at last he learns that 
"wine is a mocker," and that "all is vanity but to 
serve God and to do His will." 



94 



Chapter XII 
A Living Sacrifice 

VOLUMES, OR RATHER libraries, nave been 
written to explain the nature of God, but it is 
probably a universal experience that the more we read 
of other people 's explanations, the less we understand. 
There is one description, given by the inspired apostle 
John when he wrote "God is Light," which is as 
illuminating as the others are befogging to the mind. 
Anyone who takes this passage for meditation occa- 
sionally will find a rich reward waiting, for no mat- 
ter how many times we take up this subject, our own 
development in the passing years assures us each time 
a fuller and better understanding. Each time we 
sink ourselves in these three words we lave in a spir- 
itual fountain of inexhaustible depth, and each suc- 
ceeding time we sound more thoroughly the divine 
depths and draw more closely to our Father in heaven. 
To get in touch with our subject, let us go back in 
time to get our bearing and the direction of our future 
line of progress. 



A Living Sacrifice 95 

The first time our consciousness was directed to- 
wards the Light was shortly after we had become en- 
dowed with mind and had entered definitely upon 
our evolution as human beings in Atlantis, the land of 
the mist, deep down in the basins of the earth, where 
the warm mist emitted from the cooling earth hung 
like a dense fog over the land. Then the starry heights 
of the universe were never seen, nor could the silvery 
light of the moon penetrate the dense, foggy atmos- 
phere which hung over that ancient land. Even the 
fiery splendor of the sun was almost totally extin- 
guished, for when we look in the Memory of Nature 
pertaining to that time, it appears very much as an 
arc lamp on a high pole looks to us when it is foggy. 
It was exceedingly dim, and had an aura of various 
colors, very similar to those which we observe around 
an arc light. 

But this light had a fascination. The ancient At- 
lanteans were taught by the divine Hierarchs who 
walked among them, to aspire to the light, and as the 
spiritual sight was then already on the wane (even 
the messengers, or Elohim, being perceived with diffi- 
culty by the majority), they aspired all the more 
ardently to the new light, for they feared the darkness 
of which they had become conscious through the gift 
of mind. 

Then came the inevitable flood when the mist 
cooled and condensed. The atmosphere cleared, and 
the "chosen people" were saved. Those who had 



96 Gleanings of a Mystic 

worked within themselves and learned to build the 
necessary organs required to breathe in an atmosphere 
such as we have today, survived and came to the light. 
It was not an arbitrary choice; the work of the past 
consisted of body building. Those who had only gill 
clefts, such as the foetus still uses in its prenatal de- 
velopment, were as unfit physiologically to enter the 
new era as the foetus would be to be born were it to 
neglect to build lungs. It would die as those ancient 
people died when the rare atmosphere made gill clefts 
useless. 

Since the day when we came out of ancient Atlantis 
our bodies have been practically complete, that is 
to say, no new vehicles are to be added; but from 
that time and from now on those who wish to follow 
the light must strive for soul growth. The bodies 
which we have crystallized about us must be dissolved, 
and the quintessence of experience extracted, which 
as ^soul" may be amalgamated with the spirit to 
nourish it from impotence to omnipotence. Therefore, 
the Tabernacle in the "Wilderness was given to the 
ancients, and the light of God descended upon the 
Altar of Sacrifice. This is of great signficance : The 
ego had just descended into its tabernacle, the body. 
"We all know the tendency of the primitive instinct 
towards selfishness, and if we have studied the higher 
ethics we also know how subversive of good the in- 
dulgence of the egotistic tendency is; therefore, God 



A Living Sacrifice 97 

immediately placed before mankind the Divine Light 
upon the Altar of Sacrifice. 

Upon this altar they were forced by dire necessity 
to offer their cherished possessions for every trans- 
gression, God appearing to them as a hard taskmaster 
whose displeasure it was dangerous to incur. But still 
the Light drew them. They knew then that it was 
futile to attempt to escape from the hand of God. 
They had never heard the words of John, "God is 
Light," but they had already learned from the 
heavens in a measure the meaning of infinitude, as 
measured by the realm of light, for we hear David 
exclaim: "Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or 
whither shall I flee from thy presence ? If I ascend up 
into heaven, thou art there : if I make my bed in hell, 
thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, 
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even 
there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall 
hold me. If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me, 
even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the 
darkness hideth not from thee, but the night shineth 
as the day, for the darkness and the light are both 
alike to thee." 

With every year that passes, with the aid of the 
greatest telescopes which the ingenuity and mechani- 
cal skill of man have been able to construct to pierce 
the depths of space, it becomes more evident that the 
infinitude of light teaches us the infinitude of God. 
When we hear that "men loved darkness rather than 

7 



98 Gleanings of a Mystic 

Light because their deeds were evil," that also rings 
true to what we unfortunately know as present day 
facts, and illumines the nature of God for us; for is 
it not true that we always feel endangered in the dark, 
but that the light gives us a sense of safety which is 
akin to the feeling of a child who feels the protecting 
hand of its father? 

To render permanent this condition of being in the 
Light was the next step in God's work with us, which 
culminated in the birth of Christ, who as the bodily 
presence of the Father, bore about in Himself that 
Light, for the Light came into the world that whoso- 
ever should believe in Christ should not perish, but 
have everlasting life. He said, ' ' I am the Light of the 
World." The altar in the Tabernacle had illustrated 
th£ principle of sacrifice as the medium of regenera- 
tion, so Christ said to His disciples : Greater love hath 
no man than this, that he lay down his life for his 
friends. Ye are my friends. And forthwith He com- 
menced a sacrifice, which, contrary to the accepted 
orthodox opinion was not consummated in a few 
hours of physical suffering upon a material cross, but 
is as perpetual as were the sacrifices made upon the 
altar of the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, for it en- 
tails an annual descent into the earth and an endur- 
ance of all that the cramping earth conditions must 
mean to such a great spirit. 

This must continue till a sufficient number have 
evolved who can bear the burden of this dense lump 



A Living Sacrifice 99 

of darkness which we call the earth, and which hangs 
as a millstone about the neck of humanity, an impedi- 
ment to further spiritual growth. Until we learn to 
follow ' ' in His steps, ' ' we can rise no higher towards 
tne Light. 

It is related that when Leonardo da Vinci had com- 
pleted his famous painting. "The Last Supper/' he 
asked a friend to look at it and tell him what he 
thought of it. 

The friend looked at it critically for a few minutes 
and then said: 

"I think you have made a mistake in painting the 
goblets from which the apostles drink so ornamental 
and to resemble gold. People in their positions would 
not drink from such expensive vessels." 

Da Vinci then drew his brush through the entire 
set of vessels which had drawn the criticism of his 
friend, but he was heartbroken, for he had painted 
that picture with his soul rather than with his hands, 
and he had prayed over it that it might speak a mes 
sage to the world. He had put all the greatness of 
his art and the whole-hearted devotion of his soul into 
that effort to paint a Christ who should speak the 
word that would lead men to emulate His deeds. 

Can you see Him as He sits there at that festive 
board, the embodiment of light, and speaks those 
wonderful, mystic words : This is my body, this is my 
blood, given for you — a living sacrifice. 

In the past period of our spiritual career we have 



100 Gleanings op a Mystic 

been looking for a Light exterior to ourselves, but now 
we have arrived at the point where we must look for 
the Christ light within and emulate Him by making 
of ourselves "living sacrifices" as He is doing. Let 
us remember that when the sacrifice which lies before 
our door seems pleasant and to our liking, when we 
seem able to pick and choose our work in His vineyard 
and do what pleases us, we are not making a real 
sacrifice as He did, nor are we when we are seen of 
men and applauded for our benevolence. But when 
we are ready to follow Him from that festive board 
where He was the honored one among friends, into 
the garden of Gethsemane where Re was alone and 
wrestled with the great problem before Him while His 
friends slept, then are we making a living sacrifice. 

When we are content to follow "in His steps" to 
that point of self-sacrifice where we can say from the 
bottom of our hearts, "Thy will, not mine," then we 
have surely the light within, and there will never 
henceforth be for us that which we feel as darkness. 
We shall walk in the light. 

This is our glorious privilege, and the meditation 
upon the words of the apostle, "God is Light," will 
help us to realize this ideal provided we add to our 
faith, works, and say by our deeds as did the Christ 
of da Vinci, "This is my body and this is my blood," 
a living sacrifice upon the altar of humanity. 



101 



Chapter XIII 
Magic, White and Black 

FROM TIME to time as occasion requires we warn 
students of the Eosicrucian Fellowship in our 
private individual letters not to attend spirit seances, 
hypnotic demonstrations, or places where incense is 
burned by dabblers in occultism. Black Magic is 
practiced both consciously and unconsciously to an ex- 
tent that is almost unbelievable. "Malicious animal 
magnetism, ' ' which is only another name for the Black 
Force, is responsible for more failures in business, loss 
of health, and unhappiness in homes than most people 
are aware of. Even the perpetrators of such outrages 
are, as said, often unconscious of what harm they have 
done. Therefore it seems expedient to devote a ehapter 
to an explanation of some of the laws of magic, which 
are the same for the white as for the black. There is 
only one force, but it may be used for good or evil ; and 
according to the motive behind it and the use that is 
made of it, it becomes either black or white. 

It is a scientific axiom that "Ex nihil, nihil jit (out 
of nothing nothing comes). There must be a seed be- 



102 Gleanings of a Mystic 

fore there oan be a flower, but where the first seed 
came from is something which science has failed to 
explain. The occultist knows that all things have 
come from arche, the infinite essence of chaos, used 
by God, the Grand Architect, for the building of our 
universe; and, given the nucleus of anything, the 
accomplished magician can draw upon the same es- 
sence for a further supply. Christ, for instance, had 
some loaves and some fishes ; by means of that nucleus 
He drew upon the primordial essence of chaos for the 
rest needed in performing the miracle of feeding a 
multitude. A human magician whose power is not so 
high can more easily draw upon the things which have 
already materialized out of chaos. He may take 
flowers or fruit belonging to some one else, miles or 
hundreds of miles away, disintegrate them into their 
atomic constituents, transport them through the air, 
and cause them to assume their regular physical shape 
in the room where he is entertaining friends in order 
to amaze them. Such magic is grey at best, even if he 
sends sufficient of his coin to pay for what he has 
taken away ; if he does not, it is Black Magic to thus 
rob another of his goods. Magic to be white must 
always be used unselfishly, and in addition, for a 
noble purpose — to save a fellow being suffering. The 
Christ, when He fed the multitude from chaos, gave 
as His reason that they had been with Him for several 
days, and if they had to journey back to their homes 



Magic, White and Black 103 

without physical food they would faint by the wayside 
and suffer privation. 

God is the Grand Architect of the Universe and the 
Initiates of the White Schools are also arche-tektons, 
builders from the primordial essence in their benef- 
icent work for humanity. These Invisible Helpers 
require a nucleus from the patient 's vital body, which 
is, as students of the Kosicrucian Fellowship know, 
given to them in the effluvia from the hand, which 
impregnates the paper when the patient makes ap- 
plication for help and healing. With this nucleus of 
the patient's vital body they are able to draw upon 
virgin matter for whatever they need to restore health 
by building up and strengthening the organism. 

The Black Magicians are despoilers, actuated by 
hatred and malice. They also need a nucleus for their 
nefarious operations, and this they obtain most easily 
from the vital body at spiritualistic or hypnotic 
seances, where the sitters relax, put themselves into 
a negative frame of mind, drop their jaws, and sink 
their individualities by other distinctly mediumistic 
practices. Even people who do not frequent such 
places are not immune, for there are certain products 
of the vital body which are ignorantly scattered by all 
and which may be used effectively by the Black 
Magicians. Chief in this category are the hair 
and finger nails. The Negroes in their voodoo 
magic use the placenta for similar evil purposes. One 
particularly evil man, whose practices were exposed a 



104 Gleanings of a Mystic 

decade ago, obtained from boys the vital fluid which 
he used for his demoniac acts. Even so innocent a 
thing as a glass of water placed in close proximity to 
certain parts of the body of the prospective victim, 
while the Black Magician converses with him can 
be made to absorb a part of the victim's vital body. 
This will give the Black Magician the requisite nu- 
cleus, or it may be obtained from a piece of the per- 
son's clothing. The same invisible emanation con- 
tained in the garment, which guides the bloodhound 
upon the track of a certain person, will also guide the 
Magician, white or black, to the abode of that person 
and furnish the Magician with a key to the person's 
system whereby the former may help or hurt accord- 
ing to his inclination. 

But there are methods of protecting oneself from 
inimical influences, which we shall mention in the 
latter part of this chapter. We have debated much 
whether it were wise or not to call the attention of stu- 
dents to these facts, and have come to the conclusion 
that it does not help anyone to imitate the ostrich 
which sticks its head into a hole in the sand at the 
approach of danger. It is better to be enlightened 
concerning things that threaten so that we may take 
whatever precautions are necessary to meet the 
emergency. The battle between the good and the evil 
forces is being waged with an intensity that no one not 
engaged in the actual combat can comprehend. The 
Elder Brothers of the Rosicrucians and kindred orders 



Magic, White and Black 105 

which, we may say, in their totality represent the 
Holy Grail, live on the love and essence of the un- 
selfish service which they gather and garner as the 
bees gather honey, from all who are striving to live 
the life. This they add to the lustre of the Holy Grail, 
which in turn grows more lustrous and radiates a 
stronger influence upon all who are spiritually in- 
clined, imbuing them with greater ardor, zeal, and 
zest in the good work and in fighting the good fight. 
Similarly the evil forces of the Black Grail thrive on 
hate, treachery, cruelty, and every demoniac deed on 
the calendar of crime. Both the Black and the White 
Grail forces require a pabulum, the one of good and 
the other of evil, for the continuance of their existence 
and for the power to fight. Unless they get it, they 
starve and grow weaker. Hence the relentless strug- 
gle that is going on between them. 

Every midnight the Elder Brothers at their service 
open their breasts to attract the darts of hate, envy, 
malice, and every evil that has been launched during 
the past twenty-four hours. First, in order that they 
may deprive the Black Grail forces of their food ; and 
secondly, that they may transmute the evil to good. 
Then, as the plants gather the inert carbon 
dioxide exhaled by mankind and build their bodies 
therefrom, so the Brothers of the Holy Grail trans- 
mute the evil within the temple; and as the plants 
send out the renovated oxygen so necessary to humau 
life, so the Elder Brothers return to mankind the 



106 Gleanings of a Mystic 

transmuted essence of evil as qualms of conscience 
along with the good in order that the world may grow 
better day by day. 

The Black Brothers, instead of transmuting the evil, 
infuse a greater dynamic energy into it and speed it 
on its mission in vain endeavors to conquer the pow- 
ers of good. They use for their purposes elementals and 
other discarnate entities which, being themselves of a 
low order, are available for such vile practices as re- 
quired. In the ages when men burned animal oil or 
candles made from the tallow of animals, elementals 
swarmed around them as devils or demons, seeking 
to obsess whoever would offer an occasion. Even wax 
tapers offer food for these entities, but the modern 
methods of illumination by electricity, coal oil, or even 
paraffin candles, are uncongenial to them. They still 
flock around our saloons, slaughter houses, and 
similar places where there are passionate animals, and 
animal-like men. They also delight in places where 
incense is burned, for that offers them an avenue of 
access, and when the sitters at seances inhale the 
odor of the incense they inhale elemental spirits with 
it, which affect them according to their characters. 

This is where the protection we spoke about r>e*ore 
may be used. When we live lives of purity, when our 
days are filled with service to God and to our fellow- 
men, and with thoughts and actions of the highest 
nobility, then we create for ourselves the Golden 
Wedding Garment, which is a radiant force for good. 



Magic, White and Black 107 

No evil is able to penetrate this armor for the evil 
then acts as a boomerang and recoils on the one who 
sent it, bringing to him the evil he wished us. 

But alas, none of us are altogether good. We know 
only too well the war between the flesh and the spirit. 
We cannot hide from ourselves the fact that like Paul, 
"the good that we would do, we do not, and the evil 
that we would shun, that we do." Far too often our 
good resolutions come to naught and we do wrong 
because it is easier. Therefore we all have the nu- 
cleus of evil within ourselves, which affords the open 
sesame for the evil forces to work upon. For that 
reason it is best for us not unnecessarily to expose 
ourselves at places where seances are held with 
spirits invisible to us, no matter how fine their teach- 
ings may sound to the unsophisticated. Neither should 
we take part even as spectators at hypnotic demonstra- 
tions, for there also a negative attitude lays one liable 
to the danger of obsession. We should at all times 
follow the advice of Paul and put on the whole armor 
of God. We should be positive in our fight for the 
good against the evil and never let an occasion slip 
to aid the Elder Brothers by word or deed in the 
Great War for spiritual supremacy. 



108 



Our Invisible Government 
Chapter XIV 

IT IS WELL known to students of the Kosicrucian 
Philosophy that each species of animals is dom- 
inated by a group spirit, which is their guardian and 
looks after these, its wards, with a view to bringing 
them along the path of evolution that is best suited 
to their development; it does not matter what the 
geographical position of these animals is ; the lion in 
the jungles of Africa is dominated by the same group 
spirit as is the lion in the cage of a menagerie in our 
northern countries. Therefore these animals are 
alike in all their principal characteristics; they have 
the same likes and dislikes with respect to diet, and 
they act in an almost identical manner under similar 
circumstances. If one wants to study the tribe of lions 
or the tribe of tigers, all that is necessary is to study 
one individual, for it has neither choice nor preroga- 
tive, but acts entirely according to the dictates of the 
group spirit. The mineral cannot choose whether it 
will crystallize or not ; the rose is bound to bloom ; the 
lion is compelled to prey ; and in each case the activity 
is dictated entirely by the group spirit. 



Our Invisible Government 109 

But man is different; when we want to study him 
we find that each individual is as a species by himself. 
What one does under any given circumstances is no in- 
dication of what another may do; "one man's meat 
is another man 's poison ' ' ; each has different likes and 
dislikes. This is because man as we see him in the 
physical world is the expression of an individual in- 
dwelling spirit, seemingly having choice and preroga- 
tive. 

But as a matter of fact man is not quite as free as 
he seems ; all students of human nature have observed 
that on certain occasions a large number of people 
will act as though dominated by one spirit. It is also 
easy to see without recourse to occultism that the dif- 
ferent nations have certain physical characteristics. 
We all know the German, French, English, Italian, 
and Spanish types. Each of these nations has char- 
acteristics which differ from those of the other nations, 
thus indicating that there must be a race spirit at the 
root of these peculiarities. The occultist who is gifted 
with spiritual sight knows that such is the case, and 
that each nation has a different race spirit which 
broods as a cloud over the whole country. In it the 
people live and move and have their being ; it is their 
guardian and is constantly working for their develop- 
ment, building up. their civilization and fostering 
ideals of the highest nature compatible with their 
capacity for progress. 



110 Gleanings of a Mystic 

In the Bible we read that Jehovah, Elohim, who was 
the race spirit of the Jews, went before them in a pillar 
and a clond, and in the Book of Daniel we gain con- 
siderable insight into the workings of these race 
spirits. The image seen by Nebuchadnezzar with its 
head of gold and feet of clay showed plainly how a 
civilization built up in the beginning with golden 
ideals degenerated more and more until in the latter 
part of its existence the feet were of unstable, crum- 
bling clay, and the image was doomed to topple. Thus 
all civilizations when started by the different race 
spirits have great and golden ideals, but humanity by 
reason of having some free will and choice does not 
follow implicitly the dictates of the race spirits as the 
animals follow the commands of the group spirits. 
Hence in the course of time a nation ceases to rise, and 
as there can be no standing still in the cosmos, it be- 
gins to degenerate until finally the feet are of clay 
and it is necessary to strike a blow to shatter it, that 
another civilization may be built up on its ruins. 

But empires do not fall without a strong physical 
blow, and therefore an instrument of the race spirit 
of a nation is always raised up at the time when that 
nation is doomed to fall. In the tenth and eleventh 
chapters of Daniel we are given an insight into the 
workings of the invisible government of the race 
spirits, the powers behind the throne. Daniel is much 
disturbed in spirit; he fasts, for fully three weeks, 
praying for light, and at the end of that time an arch- 



Our Invisible Government 111 

angel, a race spirit, appears before him and addresses 
him: ''Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that 
thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to 
chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, 
and I am eame for thy words. But the prince of the 
kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days, 
but lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help 
me; and I remained there with the king of Persia.'' 
After he explains to Daniel what is to happen, he says : 
"Knowest thou wherefore I came unto thee? and now 
will I return to fight with the prince of Persia: and 
when I am gone forth, lo, the prince of Grecia shall 
come, and there is none that holdeth with me in these 
things, but Michael, your prince. ' ■ The archangel 
also says: "In the first year of Darius the Mede, 
even I stood to confirm and to strengthen him. ' f 

So when the handwriting is on the wall, some one 
is raised up to administer the blow ; it may be a Cyrus, 
a Darius, an Alexander, a Caesar, a Napoleon, or a 
kaiser. Such a one may think himself a prime mover, 
a free individual acting by his own choice and prerog- 
ative, but as a matter of fact he is only the instrument 
of the invisible government of the world, the power 
behind thrones, the race spirits, who see the necessity 
of breaking up civilizations that have outlived their 
usefulness, so that humanity may get a new start and 
evolve under a new and a higher ideal than that which 
ensouled it before. 



112 Gleanings of a Mystic 

Christ himself when upon earth, said; "I came not 
to bring peace, but a sword, " for it was evident to 
Him that as long as humanity was divided into races 
and nations there could be no "peace on earth and 
good will among men." Only when the nations have 
become united in a universal brotherhood is peace 
possible. The barriers of nationalism must be done 
away with, and to this end the United States of 
America has been made a melting pot where all that 
is best in the old nations is being brought together 
and amalgamated, so that a new race with higher 
ideals and feelings of universal brotherhood may be 
born for the Aquarian Age. In the meantime the 
barriers of nationalism have been partially broken 
down in Europe by the terrible conflict just past. This 
brings nearer the day of universal amity and the 
realization of the Brotherhood of Man. 

There is also another object to be gained. Of all 
the terrors to which mankind is subjected, there is 
none so great as death, which separates us from those 
we love, because we are unable to see them after they 
have stepped out of their bodies. But just as surely 
as the day follows the night, so will every teardrop 
wear away some of the scale that now blinds the eyes 
of man to the unseen land of the living dead. We have 
said repeatedly and we now reaffirm that one of the 
greatest blessings which will come from the war will 
be the spiritual sight which a great number of people 
will evolve. The intense sorrow of millions of people, 



Our Invisible Government 113 

the longing to see again the dear ones who have so 
suddenly and ruthlessly been torn from us, are a 
force of incalculable strength and power. Likewise 
those who have been snatched by death in the prime 
of life and who are now in the invisible world are 
equally intense in their desires to be reunited with 
those near and dear to them, so that they may speak 
the word of comfort and assure them of their well- 
being. Thus it may be said that two great armies com- 
prising millions upon millions are tunneling with 
frantic energy and intensity of purpose through the 
wall that separates the invisible from the visible. Day 
by day this wall or veil is growing thinner, and sooner 
or later the living and the living dead will meet in the 
middle of the tunnel. Before we realize it, communica- 
tion will have been established, and we shall find it a 
common experience that when our loved ones step out 
of their worn and sick bodies, we shall feel neither 
sorrow nor loss because we shall be able to see them 
in their ethereal bodies, moving among us as they 
used to do. So out of the great conflict we shall 
come as victors over death and be able to say: "O 
death, where is thy sting? grave, where is thy 
victory ? ' ' 



114 



Chapter XV 

Practical Precepts For Practical People 

^TF I WERE to do business on the principles laid 
JL down in the Sermon on the Mount I would be 
down and out in less than a year," said a critic re- 
cently. ''Why, the Bible is utterly impracticable 
under our present economic conditions; it is impos- 
sible to live according to it." 

If that is true there is a good reason for the un- 
belief of the world, but in a court the accused is al- 
ways allowed a fair trial, and let us examine the 
Bible thoroughly before we judge. What are the 
specific charges? "Why, they are countless," an- 
swered the critic, "but to mention only a few, let us 
take such passages as, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, 
for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven;' 'Blessed are 
the meek for they shall inherit the earth;' 'Take no 
thought for the morrow, what ye shall eat or what ye 
shall drink.' Such ideas point the way to the poor- 
house. ' ' 

"Very well," says the apologist, "let us take the 
last charge first. King James' version says : 'No man 



Practical Precepts For Practical People 115 

can serve two masters. Ye cannot serve God and 
mammon, therefore I say unto you, take no thought 
for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink, 
nor yet for your body what ye shall put on. Is not 
the life more than food and the body than raiment? 
Behold the fowls of the air : they sow not, neither do 
they reap nor gather into barns ; yet your heavenly 
Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than 
they? Which of you by taking thought can add one 
cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for 
raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they 
grow: they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet 
I say unto you that Solomon in all his glory was not 
arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe 
the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow 
is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe 
you, ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, 
saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? 
or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed ? for after all these 
things do the Gentiles seek; your heavenly Father 
knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But 
seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteous- 
ness and all these things shall be added unto you.' " 
If this is intended to mean that we should waste- 
fully squander all we have in prodigal or riotous liv- 
ing, then it is of course not only impractical but de- 
moralizing. Such an interpretation is, however, out 
of keeping with the tenor and teaching of the whole 
Book, and it does not say so. The Greek word 



116 Gleanings of a Mystic 

merimnon means being overly careful or anxious, 
and if we read the passage with this alteration we 
shall find that it teaches a different lesson which is 
entirely practical. Mammon is the Syriac word for 
riches, desired by foolish people. In the preceding 
paragraph Christ exhorted them not to become ser- 
vants or slaves to riches, which they must leave be- 
hind when the silver cord is broken and the spirit re- 
turns to God, but seek rather to live lives of love and 
service and lay up treasures of good deeds, which 
they might take with them into the Kingdom of 
Heaven. In the meantime, He exhorted, be not overly 
anxious regarding what you shall eat and drink and 
clothe yourself with. Why worry? You cannot add 
a hairbreadth to your height or a hair to your head 
by worrying. Worry is the most wasteful and de- 
pleting of all our emotions, and it does no good what- 
ever. Your heavenly Father knows you need mate- 
rial things, therefore seek first His kingdom and 
righteousness and all else needed will be added. On 
at least two occasions when multitudes came to Christ 
in places far from their homes and distant from 
towns where refreshment was obtainable, He demon- 
strated this; He gave them first the spiritual food 
they sought and then ministered to their bodily needs 
direct from a spiritual source of supply. 

Does it work out in these modern days? Surely 
there have been so many demonstrations of this that 
it is not at all necessary to recount any special one. 



Practical Precepts For Practical People 117 

When we work and pray, pray and work, and make 
our lives a living prayer for opportunities to serve 
others, then all earthly things will come of their own 
accord as we need them, and they will keep coming 
in larger measure according to the degree to which 
they are used in the service of God. If we regard 
ourselves only as stewards and custodians of what- 
ever earthly goods we possess, then we are really 
"poor in spirit" so far as the evanescent earthly 
treasures are concerned, but rich in the more lasting 
treasures of the Kingdom of Heaven; and if we are 
not out and out materialists, surely this is a practical 
attitude. 

It is not so long ago that " caveat emptor," "Let 
the buyer beware," was the slogan of the merchants 
who sought after earthly treasures and regarded the 
buyer as their legitimate prey. When they had sold 
their wares and received the money, it did not matter 
to them whether the buyer was satisfied or not. They 
even prided themselves on selling an inferior article 
which would soon wear out, as evident in the short- 
sighted motto, "The weakness of the goods is the 
strength of the trade. " But gradually even people 
who would scorn the idea of introducing religion into 
their business are discarding this caveat emptor as a 
motto, and are unconsciously adapting the precept 
of Christ, "He that would be the greatest among you, 
let him be the servant of all." Everywhere the best 
business men are insistent in their claim to patronage 



118 Gleanings of a Mystic 

on the ground of the service they give to the buyer, 
because it is a policy that pays, and may therefore be 
classed as another of the practical precepts of the 
Bible. 

But it sometimes happens that in spite of their de- 
sire to serve their customers, something goes wrong 
and an angry, dissatisfied buyer comes blustering in, 
decrying their goods. Under the old shortsighted 
regime of caveat emptor the merchant would have 
merely laughed or thrown the buyer out of the door. 
Not so the modern merchant, who takes his Bible into 
business. He remembers the wisdom of Solomon 
that ' ■ a soft answer turneth away wrath, ' ' and the 
assertion of Christ that "the meek shall inherit the 
earth," so he apologizes for the fault in the goods, 
offers restitution, and sends the erstwhile dissatisfied 
customer away smiling and eager to sing the praises 
of the concern that treats him so nicely. Thus by 
obeying the practical precept of the Bible, keeping his 
temper in meekness, the business man gains addi- 
tional customers who come to him in full faith of fair 
treatment, and the added profit in sales made to them 
soon overbalances the loss on goods which may have 
caused the dissatisfaction of other customers. 

It pays dividends in dollars and cents to keep one 's 
temper and be meek; it pays greater dividends from 
the moral and spiritual standpoints. What better 
business motto can be found than in Ecclesiastes : 
' ' Wisdom is better than weapons of war. Be not rash 



Practical Precepts For Practical People 119 

in thy mouth, be not hasty in thy speech to be angry, 
for anger resteth in the bosom of fools." Tact and 
diplomacy are always better than force; as the Good 
Book says : * * If the iron be blunt we must use more 
strength, but wisdom is profitable to direct.' ' The 
line of least resistance, so long as it is clean and honor- 
able, is always the best. Therefore, "Love your 
enemies, do good to them that despite fully use you/' 

It is good practical business policy to try to recon- 
cile those who do us harm lest they do more; and it 
is better for us to get over our ill feeling than to 
nurse it, for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he 
also reap, and if we sow spite and meanness, we 
breed and beget in others the same feelings. Further- 
more, all these things will apply in private life and in 
social intercourse just as in ordinary business. How 
many quarrels could be avoided if we cultivated the 
virtue of meekness in our homes; how much pleasure 
would be gained; how much happiness would come 
into our lives if in our social and business relations 
we learned to do unto others as we would that they 
should do unto us\ 

There is no need for the great mental strain that so 
many of us are working under concerning what we 
shall eat and what we shall drink. Our Father in 
Heaven does own the earth and the fullness thereof; 
the cattle on a thousand hills are His. If we learn 
truly to cast our cares upon Him, there is no doubt 
that the way out of our difficulties will be provided. 



120 Gleanings of a Mystic 

It is a fact, acknowledged by all authorities who -have 
investigated the subject, that comparatively few peo- 
ple die from lack of necessities of life, but a great 
many die because of overindulgence of the appetites. 
It is the practical experience of the writer and numer- 
ous others that if we do our work day by day as it 
appears before us, faithfully and to the best of our 
ability, the wherewithal for the morrow will always 
be provided. If we go according to the instruction of 
the Bible, doing all "as unto the Lord," it does not 
matter what line of honest work we follow; we are 
then at the same time seeking the Kingdom of God. 
But if we are only time servers, working for fear or 
favor, we cannot expect to succeed in the long run; 
health, wealth, and happiness may attend us for a 
little while, but outside the solid foundation of the 
Bible there can be no lasting joy in life and no real 
prosperity in business. 



m 



121 



Chapter XVI 
Sound, Silence, and Soul Growth 

SINCERE STUDENTS of the Science of the Soul 
are naturally anxious to grow in grace that they 
may serve so much better in the Great Work of 
Human Upliftment. Being humble and modest they 
are only too painfully aware of their shortcomings, 
and frequently while casting about for means to facili- 
tate progress they ask themselves, "What hinders?" 
Some, particularly in bygone ages when life was lived 
less intensely than now, realized that the everyday 
life among ordinary humanity had many drawbacks. 
To overcome these and further their soul growth they 
withdrew from the community to a monastery or to 
the mountains where they could give themselves over 
to the spiritual life undisturbed. 

We know, however, that that is not the, way. It is 
too well established in the minds of most of our stu- 
dents that if we run away from an experience today, 
it will confront us again tomorrow, and that the 
victor's palm is earned by overcoming the world, not 
by running away from it. The environment in which 



122 Gleanings of a Mystic 

we have been placed by the Recording Angels was our 
own choice when we were at the turning point of our 
life cycle in the Third Heaven, we then being pure 
spirit unblinded by the matter which now veils our 
vision. Hence it is undoubtedly the one that holds 
lessons needed by us, and we should make a serious 
mistake if we tried to escape from it altogether. 

But we have received a mind for a definite pur- 
pose — to reason about things and conditions so that 
we may learn to discriminate between essentials and 
non-essentials, between that which is designed to 
hinder for the purpose of teaching us a virtue by over- 
coming it, and that which is an out and out hindrance, 
which jars our sensibilities and wrecks our nerves 
without any compensating spiritual gain. It will be 
of the greatest benefit if we can learn to differentiate 
for the conservation of our strength, accepting only 
that which we must endure for the sake of our spir- 
itual well-being. We shall then save much energy 
and have much more zest in profitable directions than 
now. The details of that problem are different in 
every life; however, there are certain general prin- 
ciples which it will benefit us all to understand and 
apply in our lives, and among them is the effect of 
silence and sound on soul growth. 

At first blush it may surprise us when the state- 
ment is made that sound and silence are very import- 
ant factors in soul growth, but when we examine the 
matter we shall soon see that it is not a far-fetched 



Sound, Silence, and Soul Growth 123 

notion. Consider first the graphic expression, "War 
is hell," and then call up in imagination a war 
scene. The sight is appalling, even more so to those 
who see it with the undimmed spiritual vision than to 
those who are limited to physical sight, for the latter 
can at least shut their eyes to it if they want to, but 
the whole horror lies heavily upon the heart of the 
Invisible Helper who not only hears and sees but feels 
in his own being the anguish and pain of all the sur- 
rounding suffering' as Parsifal felt in his heart the 
wound of Amfortas, the stricken Grail king; in fact, 
without that intensely intimate feeling of oneness with 
the suffering there could be no healing nor help given. 
But there is one thing which no one can escape, the 
terrible noise of the shells, the deafening roar of the 
cannon, the vicious spitting of the machine guns, the 
groans of the wounded, and the oaths of a certain 
class among the participants. We shall need no 
further argument to agree that it is really a "hellish 
noise" and as subversive of soul growth as possible. 
The battle field is the last place anyone with a sane 
mind would choose for the purpose of soul growth, 
though it is not to be forgotten that much of this has 
been made by noble deeds of self-sacrifice there ; but 
such results have been achieved in spite of the con- 
dition and not because of it. 

On the other hand, consider a church filled with 
the noble strains of a Gregorian chant or a Handel 
oratorio upon which the prayers of the aspiring soul 



1-4 Gleanings of a Mystic 

wing their way to the Author of our Being. That 
music may surely be termed "heavenly" and the 
church designated as offering an ideal condition for 
soul growth, but if we stayed there permanently to 
the neglect of our duties we should be failures in spite 
of the ideal condition. 

There remains, therefore, only one safe method for 
us, namely, to stay in the din of the battle field of the 
world, endeavoring to wrest from even the most un- 
promising conditions the material of soul growth by 
unselfish service, and at the same time to build within 
our own inner selves a sanctuary filled with that silent 
music which sounds ever in the serving soul as a 
source of upliftment above all the vicissitudes of 
earthly existence. Having that ''living church" 
within, being in fact under that condition "living 
temples," we may turn at any moment when our at- 
tention is not legitimately required by temporal af- 
fairs to that spiritual house not made with hands and 
lave in its harmony. We may do that many times a 
day and thus restore continually the harmony that 
has been disturbed by the discords of terrestial inter- 
course. 

How then shall we build that temple and fill it with 
the heavenly music we so much desire ? What will help 
and what will hinder ? are the questions which call for 
a practical solution, and we shall try to make the an- 
swer as plain and practical as possible, for this is a 
very vital matter. The little things are particularly 



Sound, Silence, and Soul Growth 125 

important, for the neophyte needs to take even the 
slightest things into account. If we light a match in 
a strong wind it is extinguished ere it has gained a 
fair start, but if the little flame is laid on a brush- 
heap and given a chance to grow in comparative 
calm, a rising wind will fan the flame instead of ex- 
tinguishing it. Adepts or Great Souls may remain 
serene under conditions which would upset the ordi- 
nary aspirant, hence he should use discrimination and 
not expose himself unnecessarily to conditions sub- 
versive of soul growth; what he needs more than 
anything is poise, and nothing is more inimical to that 
condition than noise. 

It is undeniable that our communities are "Bed- 
lams," and that we have a legitimate right to escape 
some noises if possible, such as the screeching made 
by street cars rounding a curve. We do not need to 
live on such a corner to the detriment of our nerves or 
endeavors at concentration, but if we have a sick, cry- 
ing child that requires our attention day and night, 
it does not matter how it affects our nerves, we have 
no right in the sight of God or man to run away or 
neglect it in order to concentrate. These things are 
perfectly obvious and produce instant assent, but the 
things that help or hinder most are, as said, the things 
that are so small that they escape our attention en- 
tirely. When we now start to enumerate them, they 
may provoke a smile of incredulity, but if they are 
pondered upon and practiced they will soon win as- 



126 Gleanings of a Mystic 

sent, for judged by the formula that "by their fruits 
ye shall know them," they will show results and 
vindicate our assertion that "Silence is one of the 
greatest helps in soul growth," and should therefore 
be cultivated by the aspirant in his home, his personal 
demeanor, his walk, his habits, and paradoxical as it 
seems, even in his speech. 

It is a proof of the benefit of religion that it makes 
people happy, but the greatest happiness is usually 
too deep for outward expression. It fills our whole 
being so full that it is almost awesome, and a bois- 
terous manner never goes together with that true 
happiness for it is the sign of superficiality. The loud 
voice, the coarse laugh, the noisy manner, the hard 
heels that sound like sledge hammers, the slamming 
of doors, and the rattling of dishes are the signatures 
of the unregenerate, for they love noise, the more the 
merrier, as it stirs their desire bodies. For their 
purpose church music is anathema; a blaring brass 
band is preferable to any other form of entertainment, 
and the wilder the dance, the better. But it is other- 
wise, or should be, with the aspirant to the higher 
life. 

When the infant Jesus was sought by Herod with 
murderous intent, his only safety lay in flight, and 
by that expedient were preserved his life and power 
to grow and fulfill his mission. Similarily, when the 
Christ is born within the aspirant he can best pre- 
serve this spiritual life by fleeing from the environ- 



Sound, Silence, and Soul Growth 127 

ment of the unregenerate where these hindering 
things are practiced, and seek a place among others of 
kindred ambitions provided he is free to do so ; but if 
placed in a position of responsibility to a family, it 
is his duty to strive to alter conditions by precept 
and example, particularly by example, so that in time 
that refined, subdued atmosphere which breathes har- 
mony and strength may reign over the whole house. 
It is not essential to the happiness of children that 
they be allowed to shout at the top of their voices or 
to race pell-mell through the house, slamming doors 
and wrecking furniture in their mad race ; it is indeed 
decidedly detrimental, for it teaches them to disregard 
the feelings of others in self-gratification. They will 
benefit more than mother by being shod with rubber 
heels and taught to reserve their romps for outdoors 
and to play quietly in the house, closing doors easily, 
and speaking in a moderated tone of voice such as 
mother uses. 

In childhood we begin to wreck the nerves that 
bother us in later years, so if we teach our children 
the lesson above indicated, we may save them much 
trouble in life as well as further our own soul growth 
now. It may take years to reform a household of these 
seemingly unimportant faults and secure an atmos- 
phere conducive to soul growth, especially if the chil- 
dren have grown to adult age and resent reforms of 
that nature, but it is well worth while. "We can and 
must at least cultivate the virtue of silence in ourselves, 



128 Gleanings of a Mystic 

or our own soul growth will be very small. Perhaps if 
we look at the matter from its occult point of view in 
connection with that important vehicle, the vital 
body, the point of this necessity will be more clear. 

We know that the vital body is ever storing up 
power in the physical body which is to be used in this 
4 ' School of Experience, ' ' and that during the day the 
desire body is constantly dissipating this energy in 
actions which constitute experience that is eventually 
transmuted to soul growth. So far so good, but the 
desire body has the tendency to run amuck if not held 
in with a tight rein. It revels in unrestrained motion, 
the wilder the better, and if unbridled makes the body 
whistle, sing, jump, dance, and do all the other un- 
necessary and undignified things which are so detri- 
mental to soul growth. While under such a spell of in- 
harmony and discord the person is dead to the spir- 
itual opportunities in the physical world, and at 
night when he leaves his body the process of 
restoration of that vehicle consumes so much time that 
very little, if any, time is left for work, even if the 
person has the inclination to think seriously of doing 
such work. 

Therefore we ought by all means to flee from noises 
which we are not obliged to hear, and cultivate per- 
sonally the quiet yet kindly demeanor, the modulated 
voice, the silent walk, the unobtrusive presence, and 
all the other virtues which make for harmony, for 
then the restorative process is quickly accomplished 



Sound, Silence, and Soul Growth 129 

and we are free the major part of the night to work 
in the invisible worlds to gain more soul growth. Let 
us in this attempt at improvement remember to be 
undaunted by occasional failures, remembering Paul 's 
admonition to continue in well-doing with patient 
persistence. 



130 



Chapter XVII 
The "Mysterium Magnum" of the Rose Cross 

OCCASIONALLY we get letters from students 
voicing their regret that they are alone in the 
study of the Rosicrucian Philosophy, that their hus- 
bands, wives, children, or other relatives are unsym- 
pathetic or even antagonistic to the teachings, despite 
all efforts of the said students to interest favorably 
these friends and thus obtain companionship in their 
studies, or at least freedom to follow their bent. This 
friction causes them a certain amount of unhappiness 
according to their various temperaments, and we are 
asked by these students to advise them how to over- 
come the antagonism and convert their relatives. This 
we have done by personal letters and have been priv- 
ileged to help change conditions in not a few homes 
when our advice has been followed ; but we know that 
frequently those who suffer most acutely are silent, 
and we have therefore decided to devote a little time 
to a discussion of the subject. 

It is truly said, very truly, that "a little knowl- 
edge is a dangerous thing, ' ' and this applies with the 



The "Mysterium Magnum" 131 

same force to the Rosicrucian teachings as to any 
other subject. Therefore, the very first step is to find 
out if you have enough knowledge to be on the safe 
side. So let me ask the question : What is the Rosi- 
crucian teaching which you are so anxious to have 
others share and to which they object? Is it the twin 
laws of "Causation" and "Rebirth?" They are excel- 
lent for explaining a great many problems of life, and 
they are a great comfort when the grim reaper ap- 
pears and 7 robs our home of some one near and dear. 
But then you must remember that there are many who 
do not feel the need of any explanation whatever. 
They are constitutionally as unfit to apply it as a deaf 
mute is to use a telephone. It is true that we work 
to better advantage when conscious of the law and its 
purpose, but let us take comfort from the fact that 
these laws work for good to all whether they know 
it or not, and therefore this knowledge is not essen- 
tial. They will suffer no great loss because they do 
not embrace this doctrine, and they may escape the 
danger incident to the possession of "a little knowl- 
edge.' ' 

In India where these truths are known and believed 
by millions, people make little effort at material prog- 
ress because they know that they have endless time, 
and what they do not accomplish in this life may wait 
till the next or a later life. Many Westerners who 
have embraced the doctrine of rebirth have ceased 
to be useful members of their community by adopt- 



132 Gleanings of a Mystic 

ing a life of indolence, thereby bringing reproach on 
these so-called higher teachings. If your friends will 
have none of this teaching, leave them alone. Making 
converts is by no means the essential point of the Rosi- 
crucian teaching. The Guardian of the Gate will not 
examine them as to knowledge, and he may admit 
some who are entirely ignorant of this matter and 
shut the door in the face of others who have devoted 
their lives to studying, lecturing on, and teaching 
these laws. 

Then if the doctrines of " Causation ' ' and "Re- 
birth" are unessential, what about the complex con- 
stitution of Manl Surely it is essential to know that 
we are not merely this visible body, but have a vital 
# body to charge it with energy, a desire body to spend 
this force, a mind to guide our exertions in channels 
of reason, and that we are virgin spirits enmeshed in 
a threefold veil as egos. Is it not essential to knew 
that the physical body is the material counterpart of 
the Divine Spirit, that the vital body is a replica of 
the Life Spirit, and that the desire body is the shadow 
of the Human Spirit, the mind forming the link be- 
tween the threefold spirit and the threefold body? 

No, it is not essential to know these things. Properly 
used, this knowledge is an advantage, but it may also 
be a very decided disadvantage in the case of those 
who have only "a little knowledge" in that direction. 
There are many such who are always meditating on 
"the higher self" while entirely forgetful of the 



The "Mysterium Magnum" 133 

many ' ' lower selves ' ' groaning in misery at their very 
doors. There are many who dream day and night of 
the time when they will take their daily soul flights 
as " invisible helpers" and ease the sufferings of the 
sick and sorrowful, yet would not spend a five eeut 
car fare and an hour 's time to bring a poor, friendless 
soul in a city hospital a flower and a word of cheer. 
Again I say that the Guardian of the Gate is more 
likely to admit him who did what he could than him 
who dreamed much and did nothing to help his suf- 
fering fellow man. 

If you could get people to study the Rosicrucian 
teachings about death and the life after, you would 
feel it important that they should also know about the 
silver cord remaining unbroken for a period approxi- 
mating three and one-half days after the spirit has 
left the body, and that it must be left undisturbed 
while the panorama of its past life is being etched into 
the desire body to serve as arbiter of its life in the 
invisible world. You would like them to know all 
about the spirit's life in purgatory — how the evil acts 
of its life react upon it as pain to create conscience 
and keep it from repeating in a later life the acts that 
caused the suffering. You would have them know 
how the good acts of life are transmuted into virtues 
usable in later lives as set forth in our philosophy. 

You have no doubt been surprised at the assertion 
that a knowledge of the great twin laws is unessential. 
Probably the next assertion that it is immaterial 



134 Gleanings of a Mystic 

whether others learn about the constitution of man as 
we know it may have scandalized you; and you will 
undoubtedly feel shocked to have it stated that the 
Kosicrucian teachings concerning death and the pass- 
ing of the spirit into the unseen worlds are also com- 
paratively unnecessary to the purpose we aim to 
accomplish. It really does not matter whether your 
relatives understand or believe in these teachings. So 
far as your own passing is concerned, an earnest re- 
quest that they leave your body quiet and undisturbed 
for the proper period will probably be carried out to 
the letter, for people have an almost superstitious re- 
gard for such "last requests"; and if any of your 
friends pass over, you are there with your knowledge 
and can do the right thing for them. So never mind 
if they refuse to take up that part of the Kosicrucian 
teaching. 

But the student may say, "If a knowledge of the 
before mentioned subjects which seems of such prac- 
tical value is immaterial to advancement, then it 
follows that study of the Periods, Revolutions, World 
Globes, etc., is entirely so. That disposes of every- 
thing taught in the "Cosmo," and there is nothing left 
of the Kosicrucian teaching which we have embraced 
and to which we have pinned our faith ! ' ' 

Is nothing left ? Yes, indeed, all is left, for those 
things mentioned are only the husks which you must 
remove to get at the meat in the nut, the kernel of it 
all. You have read the "Cosmo" many time?? perhaps. 



The "Mysteritjm Magnum" 135 

Maybe you have studied it and feel proud of your 
knowledge of the world mystery, but have you ever 
read the mystery hidden in every linet That is the 
great and essential teaching, the one teaching to which 
your friends will respond, if you can find it and give 
it to them. The "Cosmo" preaches on every page the 

GOSPEL OP SERVICE. 

For our sakes Deity manifested the universe. The 
great creative Hierarchies have all been and some of 
them still are our servants. The luminous star angels, 
whose fiery bodies we see whirling through space, 
have worked with us for ages, and in due time Christ 
came to bring us the spiritual impetus needed at that 
time. It is also significant in the extreme that in the 
parable of the last judgment Christ does not say, 
"Well done, thou great and erudite philosopher, who 
knoweth the Bible, the Kabala, the 'Cosmo,' and all 
the other mysterious literature which reveals the intri- 
cate workings of nature"; but He says, "Well done, 
thou good and faithful servant : * # * enter thou 
into the joy of thy lord. * * * * For I was an 
hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and 
ye gave me drink; # * * ." Not one single 
word about knowledge; the whole emphasis was laid 
upon faithfulness and service. 

There is a deep occult reason for this : service builds 
the soul body, the glorious wedding garment without 
which no man can enter into the kingdom of the 
heavens, occultly termed "The New Galilee" and it 



136 Gleanings of a Mystic . 

does not matter whether we are aware of what is going 
on, so long as we accomplish the work. Moreover, as 
the luminous soul body grows in and around a person, 
this light will teach him or her about the Mysteries 
without the need of books, and one who is thus God- 
taught knows more than all the books in the worM 
contain. In due time the inner vision will be opened 
and the way to the Temple shown. If you want to 
teach your friends, no matter how skeptical they may 
be, they will believe you if you preach the gospel of 
service. 

But you must preach by practice. You must be- 
come a servant of men yourself if you would have 
them believe in you. If you want them to follow, 
you must lead, or they will have the right to question 
your sincerity. Remember, "ye are a city upon a 
hill," and when you make professions they have a 
right to judge you by your fruits ; therefore say little, 
serve much. 

There are many who love to discuss the harmless, 
peaceful life at dinner, oblivious of the fact that the 
red roast on the table and the cigar in the mouth dull 
the effect. There are others who make a god of the 
stomach and would rather study dietetics than the 
Bible; they are always ready to buttonhole their 
friends and discourse upon the latest food fad. I knew 
one man who was at the head of an esoteric group. 
His wife was antagonistic to occultism and the meat- 
less diet. He forced her to cook his vegetables at 



The "Mysterium Magnum" 137 

home, and told her that if she ever dared to bring 
meat into his kitchen or contaminate his dishes with 
it, he would pitch her and the dishes into the street, 
adding that if she must make a pig of herself she 
could go and get flesh food in a restaurant. 

Is it to be wondered at that she judged the religion 
by the man and would have none of it? Surely he was 
to blame, being ''his brother's keeper," and though 
this is an extreme case, it makes the lesson more 
obvious. It is to the everlasting praise of Mahomet 
that his wife became his first disciple, and it speaks 
volumes for his kindness and consideration in the 
home. His is an example we should all do well to fol- 
low if we would win our friends to the higher life, for 
though all religious systems differ outwardly fat 
kernel of all is love. 



138 



Chapter XVIII 
Stumbling Blocks 

NOT INFKEQUENTLY the remark is made by 
people who have no sympathy with or aspira- 
tions to live the higher life, that it unfits people for 
the world's work. Unfortunately it cannot be denied 
that there is seeming justification for the assertion, 
though in reality the very first requisite for living 
the higher life involves an obligation to comport 
oneself irreproachably in dealing with material mat- 
ters, for unless we are faithful in the little things, how 
can we expect to be trusted with greater responsibili- 
ties? It has therefore been deemed expedient to de- 
vote a lesson to the discussion of some of the things 
which act as stumbling blocks in the life of aspirants. 
In the Bible story where the king sent out his ser- 
vants with invitations to the feast he had prepared, 
we are told that his invitations were refused on va- 
rious grounds. Each one had material cares, buying, 
selling, marrying, therefore they could not attend to 
the spiritual things, and such people we may say 
represent the greater number of humanity today, who 



Stumbling Blocks % 139 

are too engrossed in the cares of the world to devote 
even a thought to aspiration in the higher direction. 
But there are others who become so enthusiastic upon 
the first taste of the higher teachings that they are 
ready to give up all work in the world, repudiate 
every obligation, and devote their time to what they 
are pleased to call "helping humanity." They will 
readily admit that it takes time to learn how to be a 
watchmaker, a shoemaker, an engineer, or a musician, 
and they would not for a moment dream of giving up 
their present material business to establish them- 
selves as shoemaker, watchmaker, or music teacher 
just because they felt enthusiastic about or inclined to 
take up such work. They would know that lacking 
the proper preparation and training they would be 
doomed to failure, and yet they think that just be- 
cause they have become enthusiastic over the higher 
teachings they are at once fitted to step out of the 
world's work and devote their time to service similar, 
even though in a lesser degree, to that rendered by 
the Christ in His ministry. 

One writes to Headquarters : ' ' I have given up flesh 
eating, and I long to live the ascetic life, far from 
the world's noise that jars upon me. I want to give 
my life for humanity." Another says: "I want to 
live the spiritual life, but I have a wife who needs my 
care and support. Do you think I would be justified 
in leaving her to help my fellow men ? ' ' Still another 
says : "lamina business which is unspiritual ; every 



140 Gleanings of a Mystic 

day I must do things which are against my higher 
nature, but I have a daughter dependent upon me for 
an education. What shall I do : continue or give up 1 " 
There are of course many other problems presented 
to us, but these serve as fair samples, for they repre- 
sent a class which is ready to give up the world at the 
slightest word of encouragement, and rush off to the 
hills in the expectation of sprouting wings imme- 
diately. If the people who are in that class have any 
ties, they break them without a scruple or a moment 's 
consideration. 

Another class still feels some obligation, but could 
be easily persuaded to repudiate it in order that they 
might live what they call "the spiritual life." It 
cannot be denied that when people get into this state 
of mind, when they lose their ambition to work in the 
world, when they become shiftless and neglectful of 
their duties, they merit the reproach of the commu- 
nity. 

But as already said such conduct is based upon a 
misunderstanding of the higher teachings and is not 
at all sanctioned by the Bible or the Elder Brothers. 

It is a step in the right direction when a person 
ceases to feed on flesh because he feels compassion 
for the suffering of the animals. There are many 
people who abstain from flesh foods for health 's sake, 
but theirs being a selfish motive, the sacrifice carries 
with it no merit. "Where the aspirant to the higher 
life is prompted to abstain from flesh food because he 



Stumbling Blocks 141 

realizes that the refining influence of a meatless diet 
upon the body will aid him in his quest by making 
the body more sensitive to spiritual influences, there 
is no real merit either. Truly, the person who abstains 
from flesh foods for the sake of health will be much 
benefited, and the person who abstains to make his 
body more sensitive will also get his reward in that 
respect, but from the spiritual point of view neither 
will be very much better. On the other hand, who- 
ever abstains from flesh food because he realizes that 
God 's life is immanent in every animal just as in him- 
self, that in the final analysis God feels all suffering 
felt by the animal, that it is a divine law, ' ' Thou shalt 
not kill," and that he must abstain out of compassion, 
this person is not only benefited in health and by 
making his body more sensitive to spiritual impacts, 
but because of the motive which prompts him he 
reaps a reward in soul growth immeasurably more 
precious than any other consideration. Therefore 
we would say by all means abstain from flesh food, 
but be sure to do so prompted by the right spiritual 
motive or it will not affect your spiritual interests 
one iota. 

When the enthusiast says that he wants to get away 
from the world and the noise that jars upon him to 
live the ascetic life, it is truly a strange idea of serv- 
ice. The reason why we are here in this world is that 
we may gather experience, which is then transmuted 
into soul growth. If a diamond in the rough were 



142 Gleanings of a Mystic 

laid away in a drawer for years and years, it would 
be no different than before, but when it is placed 
against the grindstone by the lapidary the harsh 
grinding process removes the last atom of the rough 
coating and brings out the beautiful, luminous gem. 
Every one of us is a diamond in the rough, and God, 
the Great Lapidary, uses the world as a grindstone 
which rubs off the rough and ugly coating, allowing 
our spiritual selves to shine forth and become lu- 
minous. The Christ was a living example of this. He 
did not go away from the centers of civilization, but 
moved constantly among the suffering and the poor, 
teaching, healing, and helping until by the glorious 
service rendered, His body was made luminous on the 
Mount of Transfiguration, and He who had trodden 
the Way exhorted His followers to be "in the world 
but not of it." That is the great lesson that every 
aspirant has to learn. 

It is one thing to go out in the mountains where 
there is no one to contradict or to jar upon our sensi- 
bilities and keep our poise there ; it is another thing 
entirely to maintain our spiritual aspirations and 
keep our balance in the world where everything jars 
upon us; but when we stay on this path, we gain a 
self-control which is unattainable in any other man- 
ner. 

However, though we are careful to prepare our food 
well and to abstain from flesh eating or any other 
contaminating outward influence, though we want to 



Stumbling Blocks 143 

get away to the mountains to escape the sordid things 
of city life, and we want to rid ourselves of every 
outward thing that may prove a stumbling block to 
our progress, still what about the things that come 
from within, the thoughts we have in our minds and 
our mental food? It will avail us not one iota of good 
if we could feed our bodies upon nectar and ambrosia, 
the ethereal food of the gods, when the mind is a 
charnel house, a habitat of low thoughts, for then 
we are only as whited sepulchres, beautiful to behold 
from without but inwardly full of a nauseating 
stench; and this mental delinquency can be main- 
tained just as easily and perhaps it is even more apt 
to be maintained in the solitude of the mountains or 
in a so-called spiritual retreat than in a city where we 
are busy with the work of our vocation. It is indeed a 
true saying that "an idle brain is the devil's work- 
shop, ' ' and the safest way to attain to interior purity 
and cleanliness is to keep the mind busy all the time, 
guiding our desires, feelings, and emotions toward 
the practical problems of life, and working, each one 
in his own immediate environment, to find the poor 
and the needy that he may give them whatever help 
their cases require and merit. That class which has 
no ties of its own may profitably make ties of love 
and friendship with those who are loveless and friend- 
less. 

Or if it is the care of a relative — wife, daughter, 
husband, or anyone else that claims us, let us remem 



144 Gleanings of a Mystic 

ber the words of Christ when He said, ' ' Who are my 
mother and my brother ? ' ' and answered the question 
by saying, "Those who do the will of my Father." 
This saying has been misconstrued by some to mean 
that the Christ repudiated His physical relationships 
for the spiritual, but it is only necessary to remember 
that in the last moments of His life on earth He called 
to Him the disciple whom He loved and brought him 
to His mother, giving him to her as a son and charg- 
ing the disciple to care for His parent. Love is the 
unifying force in life, and according to the higher 
teachings we are required to love our kin, but also to 
extend our love natures so that they may also include 
everyone else. It is good that we love our own mother 
and father, but we should also learn to love other 
people's mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, 
for universal brotherhood can never become a fact so 
long as our love is confined only to the family. It 
must be made all inclusive. 

There was one among the disciples of Christ whom 
He loved especially, and following His example we 
also may bestow a particular affection upon certain 
ones, though we ought to love everyone and do good 
even to them that despitefully use us. These are 
high ideals and difficult of accomplishment at our 
present stage of development, but as the mariner 
steers his ship by a guiding star and reaches his de- 
sired haven though never the star itself, so also by 
setting our ideals high we shall live nobler and better 



Stumbling Blocks 145 

lives than if we do not aspire, and in time and through 
many births we shall eventually attain, because the 
inherent divinity in ourselves makes it imperative. 

Finally then, to sum up, it does not really matter 
where we are placed in life, whether in a high station 
or a low. Present environment with its opportunities 
and limitations is such as suits our individual require- 
ments as determined by our self-made destinies in pre- 
vious existences. Therefore it holds for us the lesson 
we must learn in order to progress properly. If we 
have a wife, a daughter, or other family relations to 
hold us to that environment, they must be considered 
as part of what we have to reckon with, and by doing 
our duty to them we learn the required lesson. If 
they are antagonistic to our belief, if they have no 
sympathy with our aspirations, if we have on their 
account to stay in a business and do things which we 
are not pleased with, it is because we must learn some- 
thing from these things, and the proper way for the 
earnest aspirant is to look conditions squarely in the 
face with a view to finding out just what it is that is 
needed. This may not be an easy matter. It may 
take weeks, months, or years to solve the problem, but 
so long as the aspirant applies himself prayerfully to 
the task, he may be sure that the light will shine some 
day, and then he will see what is required and why 
these conditions were imposed upon him. Then hav- 
ing learned the lesson or found out its purpose, he will 
if he has the right spirit prayerfully bear the burden, 

10 



146 Gleanings of a Mystic 

for he will know that he is upon the right road and 
that it is an absolute certainty that as soon as the 
lesson of that environment has been learned a new 
way will be opened up showing him the next step 
upon the path of progress. Thus the "stumbling 
blocks ' ' will have been turned into ' - stepping stones, ' ' 
which would never have happened if he had rurj 
away from them. In this connection we would quote 
the beautiful little poem: 



"Let us not waste our time in longing 

For bright but impossible things. 
Let us not sit supinely waiting 

For the sprouting of angel wings. 
Let us not scorn to be rush-lights, 

Everyone can't be a star, 
But let us fulfill our mission 

By shining just where we are. 

There is need of the tiniest candle 

As well as the garish sun; 
And the humblest deed is ennobled 

When it is worthily done. 
We may never be called on to brighten 

Those darkened regions afar, 
So let us fulfill our mission 

By shining just where we are." 



147 



Chapter XIX 
The Lock of Upliftment 

HAVE YOU ever seen how ships going up a canal 
or river are lifted from one level to another? 
It is a very interesting and instructive process. First 
the ship is floated into a small enclosure where the 
water level is the same as that of the lower part of 
the river where the ship has previously been sailing. 
Then the gates of the enclosure are shut and the ship 
is cut off from the outside world by the high walls of 
the lock. It cannot go back to the river without; 
even the light is dimmed around it, but above the 
moving clouds or the bright sunshine are seen beckon- 
ing. The ship cannot rise without assistance, and the 
law of gravitation makes it impossible for the water 
in that part of the river where the ship has been sail- 
ing to float it to a higher level, hence no help may be 
looked for from that source. 

There are also gates in the upper part of the lock 
which prevent the waters on the higher levels from 
rushing into the lock from above, otherwise the in- 






148 



Gleanings of a Mystic 



rushing water would flood the lock in a moment and 
crush the ship lying at the bottom ley el because acting 
in conformity with that same law of gravitation. It 
is from above, nevertheless, that the power must come 
if the ship is ever to be lifted to the higher level of 
the river, and so to do this safely a small stream is 
conducted to the bottom of the lock, which lifts the 
ship very slowly and gradually but safely to the level 
of the river above. When that level has been reached, 
the upper gates may be opened without danger to the 
ship, and it may sail forth upon the expansive bosom 
of the higher waterway. Then the lock is slowly 
emptied and the water it contained added to the 
water at the lower level, which is thereby raised even 
if. but slightly. The lock is then ready to raise an- 
other vessel. 

This is, as said in the beginning, a very interesting 
and instructive physical operation, showing how hu- 
man skill and ingenuity overcome great obstacles by 
the use of nature's forces. But it is a source of still 
greater enlightenment in a spiritual matter of vital 
importance to all who aspire and endeavor to live the 
higher life, for it illustrates the only safe method 
whereby man can rise from the temporal to the spir- 
itual world, and it confutes those false teachers who 
h r personal gain play upon the too ardent desires of 
the unripe, and who profess ability to unlock the 
gates of the unseen worlds for the consideration of an 
initiation fee. Our illustration shows that this is im- 



The Lock of Upliftment 149 

possible, because the immutable laws of nature for- 
bid. 

For the purpose of elucidation we may call our 
river the river of life, and we as individuals are the 
ships sailing upon it ; the lower river is the temporal 
world, and when we have sailed its length and 
breadth for many lives, we inevitably come to the lock 
of upliftment which is placed at the end. We may 
for a long time cruise about the entrance and look in r 
impelled by an inner urge to enter but drawn by 
another impulse towards the broad river of life with- 
out. For a long time this lock of upliftment with its 
high, bare walls looks forbidding and solitary, while 
the river of life is gay with bunting and full of 
kindred craft gaily cruising about; but when the 
inner urge has become sufficiently intense, it finally 
drives us into the lock of upliftment, and it imbues 
us with a determination not to go back to the river of 
worldly life. But even at that stage there are some 
who falter and fear to shut the gate behind them; 
they aspire ardently at times to the life on the higher 
level, but it makes them feel less alone to look back 
upon the river of worldly life, and sometimes they 
stay in this condition for lives, wondering why they 
do not progress, why they experience no spiritual 
downpouring, why there is no uplift in their lives. 
Our illustration makes the reason very plain; no mat- 
ter how hard the captain might beg, the lock keeper 
would never think of releasing the stream of water 



150 Gleanings of a Mystic 

from above until the gate had been closed behind the 
ship, for it could never lift the ship an inch under 
such conditions but would flow through the open 
gates to waste in the lower river. Neither will the 
guardians of the gates of the higher worlds open the 
stream of upliftment for us, no matter how hard we 
pray, until we have shut the door to the world be- 
hind us, and shut it very tight with respect to the 
lust of the eyes and the pride of life, the sins that so 
easily beset us and are fostered by us in the careless 
worldly days. We must shut the door on them all 
before we are really in a condition to receive the 
stream of upliftment, but once we have thus shut the 
door and irrevocably set our faces forward, the down- 
pouring begins, slowly but surely as the stream of the 
lock keeper which lifts the vessel. 

But having left the temporal world with all its 
deeds behind and having set his face towards the- 
spiritual worlds, the yearning of the aspirant becomes 
more intense. As time passes he feels in increasing 
measure the void on both sides of himself. The 
temporal world and its deeds have dropped from him 
as a garment; he may be bodily in that world, per- 
forming his duties, but he has lost interest ; he is in the 
world but not of it, and the spiritual world where he 
aspires to citizenship seems equally distant. He is all 
alone and his whole being cries and writhes in pain, 
longing for light. 



m 



The Lock of Upliftment 151 

Then comes the turn of the tempter: ''I have a 
school of initiation, and am able to advance my pupils 
quickly for a fee, ' ' or words to that effect, but usually 
more subtle; and who shall blame the poor aspirants 
who fall before the wiles of these pretenders? Lucky 
are they if, as is generally the case, they are merely 
put through a ceremonial and given an empty degree, 
but occasionally they meet one who has really dabbled 
in magic and is able to open the flood gates from the 
higher level. Then the inrush of spiritual power 
shatters the system of the unfortunate dupe as the 
waters of the river above would wreck a vessel at the 
bottom of the lock if an ignorant or malicious person 
were to open the gates. The vessel must be lifted 
slowly for safety's sake, and so must the aspirant to 
spiritual upliftment; patience and unwavering per- 
sistence in well-doing are absolutely indispensable, 
and the door to the pleasures of the world must be 
kept closed. If that is done we shall surely and cer- 
tainly accomplish the ascent to the heights of the un- 
seen world with all the opportunities for further soul 
growth there found, for it is a natural process gov- 
erned by natural laws, just as is the elevation of a 
ship to the higher levels of a river by a system of 
locks. 

But how can I stay in the lock of upliftment and 
serve my fellow man? If soul growth comes only by 
service, how can I gain by isolation? These are ques- 
tions that may not unnaturally present themselves to 



152 Gleanings of a Mystic 

students. To answer them we must again emphasize 
that no one can lift another who is not himself upon 
a higher level, not so far above as to be unreachable, 
but sufficiently close to be within grasp of the reach- 
ing hand. There are, alas, too many who profess the 
higher teachings but live lives on the level with ordi- 
nary men and women of the world or even below that 
level. Their professions make the higher teachings a 
byword and call down the scorn of scoffers. But 
those who live the higher teachings have no need to 
profess them orally; they are isolated and marked in 
spite of themselves, and though handicapped by the 
misdeeds of the ' ■ professors, ' ' they do in time win the 
respect and confidence of those about them; event- 
ually they call out in their associates the desire of 
emulation, they convert them in spite of themselves, 
reaping in return for this service a commensurate 
soul growth. 

Now is the time of the year (Christmas) when the 
crest wave of spiritual power envelops the world. It 
culminates at the winter solstice, when the Christ is re- 
born into our planet, and though hampered by the 
present (from the limited viewpoint) deplorable war 
conditions, His life given for us may be most easily 
drawn upon by the aspirant at this season to further 
spiritual growth ; therefore all who are desirous of at- 
taining the higher levels would do well to put forth 
special efforts in that direction during the winter 
season. 



153 



Chapter XX 

The Cosmic Meaning of Easter 

PART I 

ON THE MORNING of Good Friday, 1857, Rich- 
ard Wagner, the master artist of the nineteenth 
century, sat on the verandah of a Swiss villa by the 
Zurich Sea. The landscape about him was bathed in 
most glorious sunshine ; peace and good will seemed to 
vibrate through nature. All creation was throbbing 
with life; the air was laden with the fragrant per- 
fume of budding pine forests — a grateful balm to a 
troubled heart or a restless mind. 

Then suddenly, as a bolt from an azure sky, there 
came into Wagner's deeply mystic soul a remem- 
brance of the ominous significance of that day — the 
darkest and most sorrowful in the Christian year. It 
almost overwhelmed him with sadness, as he contem- 
plated the contrast. There was such a marked incon- 
gruity between the smiling scene before him, the 
plainly observable activity of nature, struggling to 
renewed life after winter's long sleep, and the death 
struggle of a tortured Savior upon a cross; between 



154 Gleanings of a Mystic 

the full-throated chant of life and love issuing from 
the thousands of little feathered choristers in forest, 
moor, and meadow, and the ominous shouts of hate 
issuing from an infuriated mob as they jeered and 
mocked the noblest ideal the world has ever known; 
between the wonderful creative energy exerted by 
nature in spring, and the destructive element in man, 
which slew the noblest character that ever graced our 
earth. 

While Wagner meditated thus upon the incon- 
gruities of existence, the question presented itself: Is 
there any connection between the death of the Savior 
upon the cross at Easter, and the vital energy which 
expresses itself so prodigally in spring when nature 
begins the life of a new year? 

Though Wagner did not consciously perceive and 
realize the full significance of the connection between 
the death of the Savior and the rejuvenation of 
nature, he had, nevertheless, unwittingly stumbled 
upon the key to one of the most sublime mysteries en- 
countered by the human spirit in its pilgrimage from 
clod to God. 

In the darkest night of the year, when earth sleeps 
most soundly in Boreas' cold embrace, when material 
activities are at the very lowest ebb, a wave of spir- 
itual energy carries upon its crest the divine creative 
"Word from Heaven" to a mystic birth at Christmas; 
and as a luminous cloud the spiritual impulse broods 
over the world that "knew it not," for it "shines in 



The Cosmic Meaning of Easter 155 

the darkness" of winter when nature is paralyzed 
and speechless. 

This divine creative "Word" has a message and a 
mission. It was born to "save the world," and "to 
give its life for the world." It must of necessity 
sacrifice its life in order to accomplish the rejuvena- 
tion of nature. Gradually it buries itself in the earth 
and commences to infuse its own vital energy into the 
millions of seeds which lie dormant in the ground. It 
whispers ' ' the word of life ' ' into the ears of beast and 
bird, until the gospel or good news has been preached 
to every creature. The sacrifice is fully consum- 
mated by the time the sun crosses its Easter (n) node 
at the spring equinox. Then the divine creative Word 
expires. It dies upon the cross at Easter in a mystical 
sense, while uttering a last triumphant cry, "It has 
been accomplished" (consummatum est). 

But as an echo returns fcTus many times repeated, 
so also the celestial song of life is re-echoed from the 
earth. The whole creation takes up the anthem. A 
legion-tongued chorus repeats it over and over. The 
little seeds in the bosom of Mother Earth commence 
to germinate ; they burst and sprout in all directions, 
and soon a wonderful mosaic of life, a velvety green 
carpet embroidered with multicolored flowers, replaces 
the shroud of immaculate wintry white. From the 
furred and feathered tribes "the word of life" re- 
echoes as a song of love, impelling them to mate. 
Generation and multiplication are the watchwords 



156 Gleanings of a Mystic 

everywhere — the Spirit has risen to more abundant 
life. 

Thus, mystically, we may note the annual birth, 
death, and resurrection of the Savior as the ebb and 
flow of a spiritual impulse which culminates at the 
winter solstice, Christmas, and has egress from the 
earth shortly after Easter when the "word" "ascends 
to Heaven" on Whitsunday. But it will not remain 
there forever. We are taught that "thence it shall 
return," "at the judgment." Thus when the sun 
descends below the equator through the sign of the 
scales in October, when the fruits of the year are 
harvested, weighed, and assorted according to their 
kind, the descent of the spirit of the new year has its 
inception. This descent culminates in birth at Christ- 
mas. 

Man is a miniature of nature. What happens on 
a large scale in the life of a planet like our earth, 
takes place on a smaller scale in the course of human 
events. A planet is the body of a wonderfully great 
and exalted Being, one of the Seven Spirits before 
the Throne (of the parent sun). Man is also a spirit 
and "made in their likeness." As a planet revolves 
in its cyclic path around the sun whence it emanated, 
so also the human spirit moves in an orbit around its 
central source — God. Planetary orbits, being ellipses, 
have points of closest approach to and extreme devia- 
tion from their solar centers. Likewise the orbit of 
the human spirit is elliptical. We are closest to God 



The Cosmic Meaning of Easter 157 

when our cyclic journey carries us into the celestial 
sphere of activity — heaven, and we are farthest re- 
moved from Him during earth life. These changes 
are necessary to our soul growth. As the festivals of 
the year mark the recurring events of importance in 
the life of a Great Spirit, so our births and deaths are 
events of periodical recurrence. It is as impossible 
for the human spirit to remain perpetually in heaven 
or upon earth as it is for a planet to stand still in its 
orbit. The same immutable law of periodicity which 
determines the unbroken sequence of the seasons, the 
alternation of day and night, the tidal ebb and flow, 
governs also the progression of the human spirit, both 
in heaven and upon earth. 

From realms of celestial light where we live in 
freedom, untrammeled by limitations of time and 
space, where we vibrate in tune with infinite har- 
mony of the spheres, we descend to birth in the 
physical world where our spiritual sight is obscured 
by the mortal coil which binds us to this limited 
phase of our existence. We live here awhile ; we die 
and ascend to heaven, to be reborn and to die again. 
Each earth life is a chapter in a serial life story, ex- 
tremely humble in its beginnings, but increasing in 
interest and importance as we ascend to higher and 
higher stations of human responsibility. No limit is 
conceivable, for in essence we are divine and must 
therefore have the infinite possibilities of God dormant 
within. When we have learned all that this world 



158 Gleanings of a Mystic 

has to teach us, a wider orbit, a larger sphere of super- 
human usefulness, will give scope to our greater 
capabilities. 

"Build thee more stately mansions, my Soul. 

As the swift seasons roll, 

Leave thy low vaulted past; 

Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 

Till thou at length art free, 

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea." 

Thus says Oliver Wendell Holmes, comparing the 
spiral progression in the widening coil of a chambered 
nautilus to the expansion of consciousness which is 
the result of soul growth in an evolving human being. 

"But what of Christ?" someone will ask. "Don't 
you believe in Him? You are discoursing upon Easter, 
the feast which commemorates the cruel death and 
glorious, triumphant resurrection of the Savior, but 
you seem to be alluding to Him more from an allegor- 
ical point of view than as an actual fact. ' ' 

Certainly we believe in the Christ; we love Him 
with our whole heart and soul, but we wish to empha- 
size the teaching that Christ is the first fruits of the 
race. He said that we shall do the things He did, 
"and greater." Thus we are Christs-in-the-making. 

"Though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born, 
And not within thyself, thy soul will be forlorn. 
The cross on Golgotha thou lookest to in vain, 
Unless within thyself it be set up again." 



The Cosmic Meaning of Easter 159 

Thus proclaims Angelus Silesius, with true mystic 
understanding of the essentials of attainment. 

We are too much in the habit of looking to an out- 
side Savior while harboring a devil within; but till 
Christ be formed in us, as Paul says, we shall seek in 
vain, for as it is impossible for us to perceive light 
and color, though they be all about us, unless our 
optic nerve registers their vibrations, and as we re- 
main unconscious of sound when the tympanum of 
our ear is insensitive, so also must we remain blind 
to the presence of Christ and deaf to His voice until 
we arouse our dormant spiritual natures within. But 
once these natures have become awakened, they will 
reveal the Lord of Love as a prime reality; this on 
the principle that when a tuning fork is struck, an- 
other of identical pitch will also commence to sing, 
while tuning forks of different pitches will remain 
mute. Therefore the Christ said that His sheep 
knew the sound of His voice and responded, but the 
voice of the stranger they heard not. (John 10:5). No 
matter what our creed, we are all brethren of Christ, 
so let us rejoice, the Lord has risen ! Let us seek Him 
and forget our creeds and other lesser differences. 



160 



Chapter XXI 
The Cosmic Meaning of Easter 
PART II 

ONCE MORE we have reached the final act in the 
cosmic drama involving the descent of the solar 
Christ Ray into the matter of onr earth, which is 
completed at the Mystic Birth celebrated at Christmas, 
and the Mystic Death and Liberation, which are 
celebrated shortly after the vernal eqninox when the 
sun of the new year commences its ascent into the 
hig'her spheres of the northern heavens, having poured 
out its life to save humanity and give new life to 
everything upon earth. At this time of the year a 
new life, an augmented energy, sweeps with an irre- 
sistible force through the veins and arteries of all 
living beings, inspiring them, instilling new hope, 
new ambition, and new life, impelling them to new 
activities whereby they learn new lessons in the school 
of experience. Consciously or unconsciously to the 
beneficiaries, this outwelling energy invigorates every- 
thing that has life. Even the plant responds by an 
increased circulation of sap, which results in addi- 



The Cosmic Meaning of Easter 



161 



tional growth of the leaves, flowers, and fruits where- 
by this class of life is at present expressing itself and. 
evolving to a higher state of consciousness. 

But wonderful though these outward physical mani- 
festations are, and glorious though the transforma- 
tion may be called which changes the earth from a 
waste of snow and ice into a beautiful, blooming 
garden, it sinks into insignificance before the spir- 
itual activities which run side by side therewith. The 
salient features of the cosmic drama are identical in 
point of time with the material effects of the sun in 
the four cardinal signs, Aries , Cancer, Libra, and 
Capricorn, for the most significant events occur at 
the equinoctial and solstitial points. 

It is really and actually true that "in God we live 
and move and have our being. ' ' Outside Him we could 
have no existence; we live by and through His life; 
we move and act by and through His strength; it is 
His power which sustains our dwelling place, the 
earth, and without His unflagging, unwavering ef- 
forts the universe itself would disintegrate. Now we 
are taught that man was made in the likeness of God, 
and we are given to understand that according to the 
law of analogy we are possessed of certain powers 
latent within us which are similar to those we see so 
potently expressed in the labor of Deity in the uni- 
verse. This gives us a particular interest in the an- 
nual cosmic drama involving the death and resurrec- 
tion of the sun. The life of the God Man, Christ 

11 



162 Gleanings of a Mystic 

Jesus, was moulded in conformity with the solar story, 
and it foreshadows in a similar manner all that may 
happen to the Man God of whom this Christ Jesus 
prophesied when He said: The works that I do shall 
ye do also ; and greater works shall ye do ; whither I 
go thou canst not follow me now, but thou shalt follow 
me afterwards. 

Nature is the symbolic expression of God. She 
does nothing in vain or gratuitously, but there is a 
purpose behind every thing and every act. Therefore 
we should be alert and regard carefully the signs in the 
heavens for they have a deep and important meaning 
concerning our own lives. The intelligent understand- 
ing of their purpose enables us to work so much more 
efficiently with God in His wonderful efforts for the 
emancipation of our race from bondage to the laws of 
nature, and for its liberation into a full measure of 
the stature of the sons of God — crowned with glory, 
honor, and immortality, and free from the power of 
sin, sickness, and suffering which now curtail our 
lives by reason of our ignorance and nonconformity 
to the laws of God. The divine purpose demands this 
emancipation, but whether it is to be accomplished by 
the long and tedious process of evolution or by the 
immensely quicker pathway of Initiation depends 
upon whether or not we are willing to lend our co- 
operation. The majority of mankind go through life 
with unseeing eyes and with ears that do not hear. 
They are engrossed in their material affairs, buying 



The Cosmic Meaning of Easter 163 

and selling', working and playing, without an ade- 
quate understanding or appreciation of the purpose 
of existence, and were it unfolded to them it is scarcely 
to be expected that they would conform and co-oper- 
ate because of the sacrifice it involves. 

It is no wonder that the Christ appeals particularly 
to the poor and that He emphasizes the difficulty of 
the rich entering the kingdom of heaven, for even to 
this day when humanity has advanced in the school 
of evolution for two millenia since His day, we find 
that the great majority still value their houses and 
lands, their pretty hats and gowns, the pleasures of 
society, dances, and dinners more than the treasures 
of heaven which are garnered by service and self- 
sacrifice. Although they may intellectually perceive 
the beauty of the spiritual life, its desirability fades 
into insignificance in their eyes when compared with 
the sacrifice involved in attaining. Like the rich 
young man they would willingly follow Christ were 
there no such sacrifice involved. They prefer rather 
to go away when they realize that sacrifice is the one 
condition upon which they may enter discipleship. So 
for them Easter is simply a season of joy because it is 
the end of winter and the beginning of the summer 
season with its call of outdoor sports and pleasures. 

But for those who have definitely chosen the path 
of self-sacrifice that leads to Liberation, Easter is the 
annual sign given them as evidence of the cosmic basis 
of their hopes and aspirations. As Paul properly states 



164 Gleanings of a Mystic 

in that glorious fifteenth chapter of 1st Corinthians, 
"If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, 
and your faith is also vain. 

"Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God, be- 
cause we have testified of God that He raised up 
Christ, whom He raised not up if so be that the dead 
rise not. 

' ' For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised. 

"And if Christ be not raised your faith is vain; y 1 , 
are yet in your sins. 

1 ' If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are 
of all men most miserable. 

"If after the manner of men I have fought with 
# beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me if the dead 
rise not? 

' ' But now is Christ risen from the dead, and be- 
come the first fruits of them that slept." 

But in the Easter sun which at the vernal equinox 
commences to soar into the northern heavens after 
having laid down its life for the earth, we have the 
cosmic symbol of the verity of resurrection. When 
taken as a cosmic fact in connection with the law of 
analogy that connects the macrocosm with the micro- 
cosm, it is an earnest that some day we shall all attain 
the cosmic consciousness and know positively for our- 
selves by our own experience that there is no death, 
but that what seems so is only a transition into a finer 
sphere. 



The Cosmic Meaning of Easter 165 

It is an annual symbol to strengthen our souls in 
the work of well-doing that we may grow the golden 
wedding garment required to make us sons of God in 
the highest and holiest sense. It is literally true that 
unless we walk in the light as God is in the light, we 
are not in fellowship ; but by making the sacrifices and 
rendering the services required of us to aid in the 
emancipation of our race we are building the soul 
body of radiant golden light which is the special sub- 
stance emanated from and by the Spirit of the Sun, 
the Cosmic Christ. When this golden substance has 
clothed us with sufficient density, then we shall be 
able to imitate the Easter sun and soar into the higher 
spheres. 

With these ideals firmly fixed in our minds, Easter 
time becomes a season when it is in order to review 
our life during the preceding year and make new 
resolutions for the coming season to serve in further- 
ing our soul growth. It is a season when the symbol 
of the ascending sun should lead us up to a keen 
realization of the fact that we are but pilgrims and 
strangers upon earth, that our real home as spirits is 
in heaven, and that we ought to endeavor to learn 
the lessons in this life school as quickly as is consistent 
with proper service, so that as Easter Day marks the 
resurrection and liberation of the Christ Spirit from 
the lower realms, so we also may continually look for 
the dawn of that day which shall permanently free 
us from the meshes of matter, from the body of sin 



166 Gleanings of a Mystic 

and death, together with our brethren in bondage, 
for no true aspirant would conceive of a liberation 
that did not include all who were similarly placed. 

This is a gigantic task ; the contemplation of it may 
well daunt the bravest heart, and were we alone it 
could not be accomplished; but the divine hierarchies 
who have guided humanity upon the path of evolu- 
tion from the beginning of our career are still active 
and working with us from their sidereal worlds, and 
with their help we shall eventually be able to accom- 
plish this elevation of humanity as a whole and attain 
to an individual realization of glory, honor, and im- 
mortality. Having this great hope within ourselves, 
this great mission in the world, let us work as never 
oefore to make ourselves better men and women, so 
that by our example we may waken in others a desire 
to lead a life that brings liberation. 



167 



Chapter XXII 



The Newborn Christ 



IT HAS OFTEN been said in our literature that the 
sacrifice of Christ was not an event which, taking 
place on Golgotha, was accomplished in a few hours 
once and for all time, but that the mystic births and 
deaths of the Redeemer are continual cosmic occur- 
rences. We may therefore conclude that this sacrifice 
is necessary for our physical and spiritual evolution 
during the present phase of our development. As the 
annual birth of the Christ Child approaches, it pre- 
sents a never old, ever new theme for meditation, from 
which we may profit by pondering it with a prayer 
that it may create in our hearts a new light to guide 
us upon the path of regeneration. 

The inspired apostle gave us a wonderful definition 
of Deity when he said that "God is Light," and 
therefore "light" has been used to illustrate the 
nature of the Divine in the Rosicrucian teachings, 
especially the mystery of the Trinity in Unity. It is 
clearly taught in the Holy Scriptures of all times 
that God is one and indivisible. At the same time we 



168 Gleanings of a Mystic 

find that as the one white light is refracted into 
three primary colors, red, yellow, and bine, so God 
appears in a threefold role during manifestation by 
the exercise of the three divine functions of creation, 
preservation, and dissolution. 

When He exercises the attribute of creation, God 
appears as Jehovah, the Holy Spirit ; He is then Lord 
of law and generation and projects the solar fertiliz- 
ing principle indirectly through the lunar satellites 
of all planets where it is necessary to furnish bodies 
for their evolving beings. 

When He exercises the attribute of preservation 
for the purpose of sustaining the bodies generated by 
Jehovah under the laws of nature, God appears as the 
Redeemer, Christ, and radiates the principles of love 
'and regeneration directly into any planet where the 
creatures of Jehovah require this help to extricate 
themselves from the meshes of mortality and egotism 
in order to attain to altruism and endless life. 

When God exercises the divine attribute of dissolu- 
tion, He appears as The Father who calls us back to 
our heavenly home to assimilate the fruits of expe- 
rience and soul growth garnered by us during the day 
of manifestation. This Universal Solvent, the ray of 
the Father, emanates from the Invisible Spiritual 
Sun. 

These divine processes of creation and birth, 
preservation and life, and dissolution, death and re- 
turn to the Author of our being we see everywhere 



The Newborn Christ 169 

about us, and we recognize the fact that they are 
activities of the Triune God in manifestation. But 
have we ever realized that in the spiritual world there 
are no definite events, no static conditions; that the 
beginning and the end of all adventures of all age? 
are present in the eternal "here" and "now?" From 
the bosom of the Father there is an everlasting out- 
welling of the essence of things and events, which 
enters the realms of "time" and "space." There it 
gradually crystallizes and becomes inert, necessitating 
dissolution that there may be room for other things 
and other events. 

There is no escape from this cosmic law ; it applies 
to everything in the realm of time and space, the 
Christ ray included. As the lake which empties itself 
into the ocean is replenished when the water that left 
it has been evaporated and returns to it as rain, to 
flow again ceaselessly toward the sea, so the Spirit of 
Love is eternally born of the Father, day by day, 
hour by hour, endlessly flowing into the solar universe 
to redeem us from the world of matter which en- 
meshes us in its death grip. Wave upon wave is thus 
impelled outward from the sun to all the planets, 
giving a rhythmic urge to the evolving creatures there. 

And so it is in the very truest and most literal sense 
a newborn Christ that we hail at each approaching 
Yule-feast, and Christmas is the most vital annual 
event for all humanity whether we realize it or not. 
It is not merely a commemoration of the birth of our 



170 Gleanings of a Mystic 

beloved Elder Brother, Jesus, but the advent of the 
rejuvenating love life of our Heavenly Father, sent 
by Him to redeem the world from the wintry death 
grip. "Without this new infusion of divine life and 
energy we should soon perish physically, and our 
orderly progress would be frustrated so far as our 
present lines of development are concerned. This 
is a point we should endeavor to realize thoroughly in 
order that we may learn to appreciate Christmas as 
keenly as we should. 

We may learn a lesson in this respect as in many 
others from our children or from reminiscences of our 
own childhood. How keen were our anticipations of 
the approaching feast ! How eagerly we waited for the 
hour when we should receive the gifts which we knew 
would be forthcoming from Santa Claus, the mys- 
terious universal benefactor who brought the toys for 
the coming year ! How would we have felt had our 
parents given us the dismembered dolls and broken 
drums of yesteryear ? It would surely have been felt as 
an overwhelming misfortune and would have left a 
deep sense of broken trust which even time would have 
found it difficult to heal ; yet it would have been as 
nothing compared with the cosmic calamity that would 
befall mankind if our Heavenly Father should fail to 
provide the newborn Christ for our cosmic Christmas 
gift. 

The Christ of last year cannot save us from physical 
famine any more than last year's rain can drench the 



The Newborn Christ 171 

soil again and swell the millions of seeds that slumber 
in the earth awaiting the germinal activities of the 
Father 's life to begin their growth ; the Christ of lasi 
year cannot kindle anew in our hearts the spiritual 
aspirations which urge us onward in the Quest any 
more than last summer's heat can warm us now. The 
Christ of last year gave us His love and His life to 
the last breath without stint or measure ; when He was 
born into the earth last Christmas, he endued 
with life the sleeping seeds which have grown and 
gratefully filled our granaries with the bread of 
physical life ; He lavished the love given Him by the 
Father upon us, and when He had wholly spent His 
life, He died at Eastertide to rise again to the Father, 
as the river by evaporation rises to the sky. 

But endlessly wells the divine love ; as a father 
pities his children, so does our Heavenly Father pity 
us, for He knows our physical and spiritual frailty and 
dependence. Therefore we are now confidently await- 
ing the mystic birth of the Christ of another year, 
laden with new life and love sent by the Father to pre- 
serve us from the physical and spiritual famine which 
would ensue were it not for this annual love offering. 

Younger souls usually find it difficult to disabuse 
their minds of the personality of God, of Christ, and 
of the Holy Spirit, and some can only love Jesus, the 
man. They forget Christ, the Great Spirit, who 
ushered in a new era in which the nations established 
under the regime of Jehovah will be broken to pieces 



172 Gleanings of a Mystic 

that the sublime structure of Universal Brotherhood 
may be built upon their ruins. In time all the world 
will realize that "God is spirit, to be worshiped in 
spirit and in truth. " It is well to love Jesus and to 
imitate him; we know of no nobler ideal and none 
more worthy. Could a nobler one have been found, 
Jesus would not have been chosen as a vehicle of that 
Great One, the Christ, in whom dwelt the Godhead. 
We shall therefore do well to follow ' ' in His steps. ' ' 

At the same time we shall exalt God in our own 
consciousness by taking the word of the Bible that 
He is spirit, and that we cannot make any likeness 
which will portray Him for He is like nothing in 
heaven or on earth. "We can see the physical vehicles 
of Jehovah circling as satellites around the various 
planets; we can also see the sun, which is the visible 
vehicle of the Christ ; but the Invisible Sun, which is 
the vehicle of the Father and the source of all, ap- 
pears to the greatest of human seers only as a higher 
octave of the photosphere of the sun, a ring of violet- 
blue luminosity behind the sun. But we do not need 
to see ; we can feel His love, and that feeling is never 
so great as at Christmas time when He is giving us the 
greatest of all gifts, the Christ of the new year. 



173 



Chapter XXIII 
Why I am a Rosicrucian 

NOT INFREQUENTLY we find that some one 
takes the platform to explain why he is a Bap- 
tist, Methodist, or Christian Scientist, and what his 
particular faith may be. We have often been asked 
by our students for something which would help make 
plain to their associates why they had embraced the 
teachings of the Elder Brothers given through the 
Rosicrucian Fellowship, in preference to the faith 
which they had left. We will, therefore, endeavor to 
give a succinct resume of reasons which appeal to us 
as sufficient, but students will doubtless find many 
other reasons equally good or better, which they may 
add verbally to what is here said. 

It should be made clear in the very beginning that 
students in the Rosicrucian Fellowship do not call 
themselves Rosicrucians. That title applies alone to 
the Elder Brothers, who are the hierophants of the 
Western Wisdom Teaching. They are as far beyond 
the greatest living saint in spiritual development as 
that saint is above the lowest fetish worshiper. 



174 Gleanings of a Mystic 

When the bark of our life sails lightly upon smooth 
summer seas, wafted along by the fair winds of health 
and prosperity, when friends are present on every 
hand, eager to help us plan pleasures which will in- 
crease our enjoyment of this world's goods, when 
social favors or political powers come to us to gratify 
our every wish in whatever sphere our inclinations 
seek expression, then, indeed, we may say and seem 
justified in saying with our whole heart and soul: 
"This world is good enough for me." But when we 
come to the end of the smiling sea of success ; when 
the whirlwind of adversity has blown us upon the 
rocky shores of disaster, and a wave of suffering 
threatens to engulf us; when friends have failed and 
eVery human help is as far off as it is unavailing, 
then we must look for guidance to the skies as does 
the mariner when he steers his ship over the waste of 
waters. 

But when the skipper scans the sky in search of a 
star whereby to steer the ship safely, he finds that the 
whole heavens are in motion. Therefore to follow al- 
most any one of the myriad of wandering stars visible 
to the eye would be disastrous. To meet the require- 
ments the guiding star must be perfectly steadfast 
and immovable, and there is only one such, namely, 
the North Star. By its guiding light the mariner may 
steer in full confidence and bring his ship to a haven 
of rest and safety. Likewise one who is looking for a 
guide which he may trust in days of sorrow and 



Why I am a Rosicrucian 175 

trouble should embrace a religion founded on eternal 
laws and immutable principles, able to explain the 
mystery of life in a logical manner so that his intel- 
lect may be satisfied, and at the same time contain- 
ing a system of devotion that may satisfy the heart, 
so that these twin factors in life may receive equal 
satisfaction. Only when man has a clear intellectual 
conception of the scheme of human development is he 
in a position to range himself in line therewith. "When 
it is made clear to him that this scheme is beneficent 
and benevolent in the very highest degree, that all is 
truly ruled by divine love, then this understanding 
will sooner or later call out in him a true devotion and 
heartfelt acquiescence which will awaken in him a de- 
sire to become a co-worker with God in the world's 
work. 

When seeking souls come to the door of the church 
to seek surcease from sorrow, they cannot be satisfied 
with the platitudes that it is the will of God that 
sorrow and suffering have come to them, that in His 
divine providence He has seen fit to scourge them, 
and that they must take it as an indication that He 
regards them as His beloved children and be satisfied 
no matter what happens. They cannot see that Deity 
does justice when He makes some rich and many poor, 
a few healthy and many sickly; and it is only too 
often in evidence that iniquity is prosperous while 
rectitude is in rags. 



176 Gleanings of a Mystic 

The Rosicrucian teachings give clear and logical 
information concerning the world and man; they in- 
vite questions instead of discouraging them, so that the 
seeker after spiritual truth may receive full satisfac- 
tion intellectually; their explanations are strictly 
scientific as they are reverently religious. They refer 
us for information regarding life's problems to laws 
that are as unchangeable and immutable in their 
realm of action as the North Star is in the heavens. 

Though the world whirls upon its axis at the rate of 
one thousand miles an hour, we stand safely any- 
where upon its surface because the principle of grav- 
ity prevents us from being hurled into space by the 
terrific speed. We know that the law of gravity is 
.eternal ; it will not act today and suspend action to- 
morrow. When we enter a hydraulic elevator we rest 
safely upon a column of water because that fluid is 
more incompressible than most solids, and this prop- 
erty is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Were 
its action suspended for even a few moments, thous- 
ands of people would fall to their death; but it is 
steadfast and sure, therefore we trust it implicitly. 

The law of cause and effect is also immutable ; if we 
throw a stone into the air, the act is not complete until 
by gravitation it has returned to earth. "Whatsoever a 
man soweth, that shall he also reap,'' is the way this 
law is expressed in the realm of morals. "The mills 
of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small, ' ' 
and once an act has been done, the reaction will come 



Why I am a Rosicrucian 177 

some time, some where, as surely as the stone that 
was thrown into the air will return to the earth. 

But it is manifest that all of the causes that we set 
going in life do not ripen in the present existence, and 
it therefore follows that they must find their fruition 
somewhere else at some other time, or the law would be 
invalidated, a proposition that would be as absolutely 
impossible as that the law of gravitation could be sus- 
pended, for either would make chaos out of cosmos. 
The Rosicrucian teachings explain this by a statement 
that man is a spirit attending the School of Life for the 
purpose of unfolding latent spiritual power, and that 
for this purpose he lives many lives in earthly bodies 
of increasingly finer texture, which enable him to ex- 
press himself better and better. In the lower grades 
of this school of evolution man has few faculties. 
Each life-day he comes to school in the morning of 
childhood, and is given lessons to learn, and at night 
when old and gray the nurse maid of nature, " Death/ ' 
puts him to sleep that he may rest from his labors until 
the dawn of another life-day, when he is given a new 
child body and new lessons. Each day " Experience,' ' 
the teacher of the school helps him to learn some of the 
lessons of life, and gradually he becomes more and 
more proficient. Some day he will have learned the 
entire curriculum of the school, which includes build- 
ing of bodies as well as using them. 

Thus when we see one who has few faculties, we 
know that he is a young soul who has gone to life's 

12 



178 Gleanings of a Mystic 

school only a few days ; and when we find a beautiful 
character, we recognize an old soul who has spent 
much time in mastering its lessons. Therefore we do 
not despair of God 's love when we see the inequalities 
of life, for we know that in time all will be perfect 
as our Father in Heaven is perfect. 

The Rosicrucian teachings also take the sting of sor- 
row out of the greatest of all trials, the loss of loved 
ones, even if they have been what is called wayward 
or black sheep ; for we know that it is an actual fact 
that in God we live and move and have our being ; 
hence, if one single soul were lost, a part of God would 
be lost, and such a proposition is absolutely impossible. 
Under the immutable law of cause and effect we are 
.bound to meet these loved ones some time in the future 
under other circumstances, and there the love that 
binds us together must continue until it has found its 
fullest expression. The laws of nature would be 
violated if a stone thrown from the earth were to re- 
main suspended in the atmosphere, and under the 
same immutable laws those who pass into the higher 
spheres must return. Christ said, "Ye must be born 
again, ' ' and " If I go to my Father, I will return. ' ' 

But although our reason may reach into the nrys- 
teries of life, there is still a higher stage, actual first- 
hand knowledge. As a matter of fact the foregoing 
propositions are capable of verification by each one, 
for we all have a sixth sense latent in our being, which 
will sometime enable us to view the spiritual world 



Why I am a Rosicrucian 179 

with the same distinctness as that with which we see 
the temporal. This sixth sense will be developed by 
all in the course of evolution, and there are certain 
means whereby it may be developed now by all who 
care to take the necessary time and trouble to do so. 
Some have done this, and they have told us of their 
travels in the land of the soul. We believe their testi- 
mony concerning that place just as we believe what 
people who have traveled in Africa or Australia tell 
us of those countries. And just as we say that we 
know the earth rotates upon its axis and revolves in 
its orbit around the sun because we have been thus in- 
formed by scientists who have made the investiga- 
tions and calculations that establish these facts, so 
also we say that we hnoiv the dead live, and that 
whether dead or alive, in the body or out of it, we are 
all enfolded in the love of our Father in Heaven, with- 
out whose Will not the smallest sparrow falls to the 
ground, and that He cares for all and orders our steps 
in harmony with His plans to develop our spiritual 
powers to the highest possible degree. 

So because of the logical, soul-satisfying philosophy 
of life given by the Rosicrucians, we follow their 
teachings in preference to other systems, and invite 
others who wish to share the blessings thereof to in- 
vestigate. 



180 



Chapter XXIV 
The Object of the Eosicrucian Fellowship 

THE OBJECT of the Eosicrucian Fellowship has 
been clearly stated in our literature, as have the 
means whereby it is hoped to attain the end in view, 
but in response to requests for a succinct summary we 
devote this chapter to that subject. 

The world is God's training school. During the 
past we have learned to build different vehicles, 
among others the physical body. By this work we are 
promoted from class to class, each with its particular 
scope of consciousness. We evolved eyes that wc 
might see, ears that we might hear, and other organs 
that we might taste, smell, and feel. But not all egos 
were promoted at every step. When the mist in the 
air at the time of Atlantis condensed and filled the 
basins of the earth with oceans of water, driving men 
to the highlands, many perished by asphyxiation be- 
cause they had not evolved lungs. They could not 
pass through the portal of the rainbow, which was, 
so to speak, the entrance gate to the new age with its 
dry atmospheric conditions. 



The Object op the Rosicrucian Fellowship 181 

Another great world transformation is coming, we 
know not when; even the Christ confessed His ignor- 
ance of the day and the hour ; but He warned us that 
the day would come as a thief in the night, and He 
prophesied that the conditions in the world would then 
be similar to those prevailing in the days of Noah; 
they were living then in carefree enjoyment of life 
when suddenly the floodgates of heaven were opened, 
and death and destruction spread before them. 

Christ told us that it is possible to take the kingdom 
of God by storm and attain to the consciousness and 
conditions there prevailing. But Paul informs us that 
flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God ; he 
states that we have a soul body (soma psuchicon — 
1 Cor. 15: 44), and that we shall meet the Lord in 
the air when He comes. This soul body is therefore as 
necessary to entrance into the new age of the kingdom 
of God, as a body equipped with lungs was to the 
Atlanteans who desired to enter into the age in which 
we are now living. Therefore it is necessary that we 
make our calling and election sure by preparing the 
Golden Wedding Garment, the soul body, which alone 
can secure our admission to the mystic marriage. 

The multitude is slowly moving in the right direc- 
tion as led by the different churches, but there is an 
ever growing class that, so to speak, feels the wings of 
the soul body sprouting, people who feel an inner 
urge to take the kingdom of God by storm. Though 
unaware of any definite ideal, they sense a greater 



182 Gleanings of a Mystic 

truth and a more certain light than those which the 
Church radiates ; they are tired of parables and long 
to learn the underlying facts at the very feet of Christ. 

The Rosicrucian Fellowship was started for the 
purpose of reaching this class, to show them the way 
to illumination, to help them build their soul body 
and evolve the soul powers which will enable them to 
enter consciously into the kingdom of God and obtain 
first-hand knowledge. 

This is a large undertaking, none greatei and 
even under the most favorable existing conditions 
progress must be slow, but if the aspirant will con- 
tinue with patient perseverance in well doing, it can 
be done. 

The methods are definite, scientific, and religious; 
they have been originated by the Western School of 
the Rosicrucian Order, and are therefore specially 
suited to the western people. Sometimes, but very 
rarely, they bring results in a short time ; generally it 
requires years and even lives before the aspirant at- 
tains, but the following system will in the end bring 
all to their hearts' desire. 

The Tabernacle in the Wilderness was a symbolic 
representation of the way to God, and, as Paul says, 
held a shadow of better things to come. Everything 
in it had its spiritual meaning. The table of shew- 
bread gives us an important lesson germane to our 
present consideration. Students will remember that 
the ancient Israelites were commanded to bring the 



The Object of the Rosicrucian Fellowship 183 

shewbread to the tabernacle at stated intervals. The 
grain from which this was made was given them by 
God but they must prepare the soil in which it was to 
grow, they must plant and cultivate, they must weed 
and water, so as to secure the greatest possible in- 
crease ; they must harvest and thresh, grind and bake, 
ere they had the loaves which they brought to the 
tabernacle as bread to shew for their toil. Similarly, 
God gives to all the grain of opportunity to serve, but 
it is our duty to cultivate these opportunities and 
nurse and nourish them in the soil of loving kindness 
so that they may bring a great increase. We must 
always bear in mind the words of Christ that He 
came to minister and to serve. Therefore anyone 
aspiring to follow in His steps and to be great in the 
kingdom of God must ever be on the lookout for op- 
portunities to serve his fellows. Each day must be 
filled as full as possible with kind and considerate 
deeds, for they are the warp and woof of which the 
golden wedding garment is woven. Without these 
" works" no amount of prayer, fasting, or other re- 
ligious exercises will avail. It is useless to repair to 
the temple without this bread to shew that we have 
really worked in the Master's service. 

The foregoing is also the teaching of the exoteric 
churches; but the following is the exclusively Rosi- 
crucian scientific teaching and method, based upon 
the deepest knowledge of spiritual facts whereby the 
aspirant is enabled to gain the maximum soul growth 



184 Gleanings of a Mystic 

in each life, so that his spiritual advancement is 
accelerated beyond his very wildest dreams. There- 
fore this is the most important spiritual teaching that 
has been given to man in modern times, and no one 
who tries honestly to follow this simple method can 
fail to be enormously benefited : 

Ether is the medium of transmission of light, that 
which etches a picture on the photographic film. It 
permeates the air, and with every breath we draw 
from birth to death ether enters our system and etches 
a picture of our surroundings and actions on a little 
atom in the heart. Thus each carries with him a com- 
plete record of his life, which is assimilated after 
death. Expiation of the evil deeds causes pain and 
•anguish in purgatory. These are thus transmuted to 
conscience to prevent repetition of the same mistakes 
in succeeding lives : the good deeds are transmuted to 
love and benevolence. Instead of waiting for this 
post-mortem transmutation of the shewbread of life, 
the aspirant who desires to take heaven by storm may 
assimilate the fruits of each day after retiring and 
before going to sleep by running over the deeds done. 
The events of the day are considered in reverse order, 
so that that which happened in the evening is taken 
first, then the happenings of the afternoon, forenoon, 
and morning. This, is important for it conforms to 
the way the life panorama acts after death, taking first 
the events just prior to death, last the events of 



The Object of the Rosicrucian Fellowship 185 

infancy. The object is to show the effects and then 
refer them to their antecedent causes. 

In this retrospection it will do the aspirant no good 
to run over the events of the day and mildly blame 
himself where he did wrong — he is usually sure 
enough to praise himself sufficiently for his good 
deeds. But he must remember the altar of burnt 
offerings where the sacrifices for sin were offered. 
They were first rubbed with salt and then placed on 
the altar to be consumed by a divinely enkindled fire. 
Anyone knows what an intense pain is caused when 
salt is rubbed into a wound, and this rubbing with 
salt is symbolic of the pain the aspirant must feel for 
his wrongdoing. Now mark that it was not permis- 
sible to place the sacrifice on the altar until it had 
been thus rubbed with salt. God would not accept it 
before, but when it had been salted it was consumed 
by a fire kindled by God Himself. 

This tells us that unless we have washed our evil 
deeds of the day in the salt of our tears and heartfelt 
contrition, God will not accept our sacrifice of re- 
pentance ; but when we have really repented, our sins 
will be washed away and our recording atom will be 
clean as the driven snow. With respect to our good 
deeds we may remember that there were two little 
piles of frankincense on the top of the shewbread. 
These were offered upon the altar of incense, where 
the smoke ascended as a sweet savor to the Lord, so 
different from the nauseating stench that went up 



186 Gleanings of a Mystic 

from the altar where the sin offerings were burned. 
Is it any wonder that God took no delight in the sacri- 
fice of bulls and calves, but delighted in a contrite 
heart and a repentant spirit? 

It is this spiritual aromatic extract of our good 
deeds that builds our soul body. By the ordinary 
natural process it takes about one-third as many years 
in our post-mortem existence as we lived in the body, 
to reap what we have sowed. But when an aspirant 
has assimilated the fruits of life by faithful retrospec- 
tion at the end of each day, he is free as soon as he 
leaves the body and may use the years spent by others 
in purgatory and the first heaven as he pleases. Fur- 
thermore, as he needs neither food, shelter, nor sleep, 
•he may spend twenty-four hours a day doing good. 
Thus he has practically as many years of service and 
soul growth after death as the number of his earth 
life ; and being trained and schooled in this work his 
attainments are probably greater than could be made 
in a number of lives lived in the ordinary way. 

To aid deserving aspirants, still deeper and more 
definite teachings are given by the Elder Brothers 
through the Rosicrucian Fellowship. Students who 
feel the inner urge may ask for information concern- 
ing these teachings. 



187 



Index 

Abel, man of Lemuria, 23. 

Action, desirability of, 16. 

Action, good, required for soul body, 183. 

A. D. M., red earth, 78. 

Adam, a Polarian, 22. 

Airships of Atlantis, 71. 

Albumen not needed by spiritual, 24. 

Alcohol, action, 83. 

Altar of sacrifice, 96. 

America, the melting pot, 112. 

Angels, humanity of Moon Period 50. ■ 

lived in etheric world 50. | 

wisely guided man 32. _ 

Anglo-Saxons, pioneers of race, 75. I 

Animals ruled by group spirits 108. ■ 

Aquarian Age, science to rule in 82. ■ 

six hundred years until 81. g 

teacher of 76. 
Arche-Tektons, Initiates are 103. I 

Ark, airship of Atlantis, 71. ■ 

Aryan Age, invaders of 80. ■ 

Aryana, national segregation of 70. | 

Assimilation of life experiences 184. _ 

Asteroids, remnants of Moons 60. 1 

Astrclogy, value of in marriage 53. "■ 

Atlantis, destruction of 180. 
Atlantean epoch, the nadir of materiality 9. 
Atlanteans aspire to light 95. 

divinely guided 69. 
Atlantis, airships of 71. 

atmosphere of 69. 

man becomes man in 25. 

peaceful conditions of 88. 



188 Gleanings of a Mystic 

Atmosphere, changes of 180. 
Attainment* method of 171. 

Baptism, soul's urge for higher life 55. 
Black Brothers, increase evil 106. 
Black Magic, frequent practice of 101. 

golden, wedding garment protects against, 106. 

practices of 103. 
Blood hound, follows invisible emanation 104. 
Born of water and spirit 80. 
Brain gained at sacrifice of creative force 32. 
Breathing exercises, danger of 9. 

use of 10. 
Brotherhood, all members of 44. 

Cain, a Hyperborean 23. 

Candles, tallow, attract elementals 106. 

Causation 177. 

Children, training of 127. 

Chosen people 95. 

Christ, annual coming of 171. 

bodily presence of the Father 98, 

forgiveness of 57. 

Inhabits central sun 58. 

man a Christ-in-the-making 158. 

mission of 47, 87. 

power of 158, 159. 

preservation, principle of 168. 

sacrifice of 98. 
Christ, see also Earth Spirit. 
Civilization, evolution of 111. 
Communication with dead 113. 
Communion, points to age to come 55. 

worthy celebration of 31. 
Conscience gained in purgatory 184. 
Consciousness result of war between vitlal and desire 

bodies 49. 
Conservation of strength 122. 
Contentment lengthens life 51. 
Contrition, importance of 185. 
Conversion and Initiation 12. 

inner experience 13. 
Converts, making of 132. 
Courage 91. 



Index 189 

Creation, principle of Jehovah 168. 
Creative hierarchies guide man 22. 
Crystalloids aid in evolving vital body 88. 

Dead, communication with 113. 
Death, care of body after 134. 

conquest of 56. 

price of consciousness 50. 
Dense body, care of after death 134. 

crystallized state of 47. 

raising vibrations of 10. 

restoration of in sleep 128. 

spiritualization of 74. 

under laws of nature 57. 
Desire body, control of 128. 

destroys dense body 49. 

gained in Lemuria 23. 

reaction of man's acts 25. 
Dietetics, albumen not needed by spiritual 24. 

legumes not needed by advanced 24. 
Diplomacy and force 119. 
'Dissolution the Father's power 168. 
Divine hierarchies work upon man 22. 
Divine leaders abolish religious errors 46. 
Divine spirit and physical body 132. 

Earth conditions cramp humanity 99. 

crystallization of due to man 32. 
Earth Spirit body and blood 31. 
Earth Spirit, see also Christ. 
Earthly goods, use of 117. 
Easter, Christ's liberation 160. 

vital, force of 161. 
Effort brings opportunities 15. 
Ego chooses work of life 64. 
Egotism, protection from 19. 

Elder Brothers hierophants of western wisdom teaching 
173. 

high status of 173. 

not mercenary 20. 

transmute evil 105. 
Elementals inhaled with incense 106. 
Emancipation, God's purpose 162. 



190 Gleanings of a Mystic 

Environment chosen by ego 64, 122. 

power of 74. 
Epochs, changes of 77. 
Ether etches pictures on seed atom 184. 

medium of transmission of light 184. 

new element 71. 
Evolution 177. 
Evolution of man 35 

path of spiral 14. 
Exercises: Breathing practices 9, 10. 
Experience, a grindstone 63. 
Extreme unction 56. 

Faculties, evolution of 177. 

Fall, unchastity 62. 

Family, duty to 127. 

Father, The, dissolution principle of 168. 

highest Initiate of Saturn Period 58. 

inhabits spiritual sun 58. 
Finger nails used in Black Magic 103. 
Flesh, eating of, difficult to digest, 90. 

material progress result of 23, 86, 92. 

necessitated by materialism 23. 

sins of 90. 
Flood, sun in Cancer 78. 
Food, significance of 22. 
Forgiveness of Christ 57. 
Free Will 22. 

of Initiate in choice of environment 64. 

in Atlantis 25. 

Galilee, melting pot 74. 

Gill clefts replaced by lungs 24. 

Gills of early Atlantis 70. 

Glass of water in Black Magic 104. 

God, immanence of 161. 

Golden wedding garment, see Soul Body. 

Good Friday 153. 

Gospels formulae of Initiation 64. 

Grace and forgiveness of sin 34. 

Grail, see, Holy Grail. 

Group Spirit 108. 

Hair used in Black Magic 103. 



Index 191 

Healing, Rosicrucian method of 103. 
Help, practical 133. 
Hierarchies, service of 135. 

still active 166. 
Hindu breathing exercises 73. 
Holy Grail, many orders constitute 105. 

two forces of 105. 
Holy Spirit, see Jehovah. 
Human spirit and desire body 132. 
Humanity, salvation of 160. 

slowly progressing 14. 
Hyperborea, generation in 49. 
Hyperborean epoch, man plantlike in 22. 

vital body gained in 22. 
Hypnotism, danger of 107. 

I as pronoun 83. 
Inactivity causes straggling 16. 
Incense, Black Forces use 106. 
Inequalities, harmonizing of 178. 
Initiates, arche-tektons 103. 

bodies of, immaculately conceived 64. . 

choose own life work 64. 

purity of 64. 

may be women 67. 
Initiation, changes life, 13. 

confers authority 13. 

free 13. 

inner experience 12. 

money cannot buy 11. 

requirements for 20. 

spiritual process 11. 

spiritualizes vital body 67. 

through spiritual exercises 11. 

tribulation leads to 63. 
Initiation fee, impossibility of 20. 
Inner vision opened 136. 
Intellectual conception of life 175. 
Intensity of feeling 19. 

Jehovah, creation principle of 168. 
dwells in physical sun 58. 
highest Initiate of Moon Period 58. 
race spirit of the Jews 110. 



— — - 



192 Gleanings op a Mystic 

Jehovah (cont.) regent of various moons 58. 

warder of creative forces 56. 
Jesus race body of 74. 
Judgment, Sun in Libra 156. 
Justice of life 175. 

with mercy 33. 

Knowledge, necessity for 131. 

Larynx gained at sacrifice of creative force 32. 

Law, knowledge of 131. 

Law of Consequence given to Atlanteans 26. 

Laws of nature and destiny 25. 

Legumes not needed by advanced 24. 

Lemurian epoch, desire body gained in 23. 

Life Spirit and vital body 132. 

Light, Atlanteans aspire to 95. 

symbol of God 167. 
Living church within 124. 
Lords of Mercury, stragglers of past 59. 
Lords of Venus, stragglers of past 59. 
Lord's Supper, see communion. 
Lost souls 58. 
Love endlessly born 169. 

keynote of coming age 80. 

of souls 53. 

transcends sex 51. 
Lucifer spirits cause body's crystallization 32 
Lungs related to spirits' freedom 24. 

Man becomes man in Atlantis 25. 

mineral-like in Polarian Epoch 88. 
Marriage necessitated by disintegration and death 49 

sacrament of 55. 

transcends sex 51. 
Materialism, predominance of 163. 
Matter, limitation of causes self-confidence 22. 
Materialization, varieties of 102 . 
Meat non-permanent as food 82. 
Meat eating, see Flesh eating. 
Michael, race spirit 111. 
Milk aid in evolving desire body 89. 

given in Lemuria 23. 
Mind, effect of meat upon 93. 

given during Atlantean epoch 22. 



Index 193 

Mind (cont.) given for discrimination 122. 

link between spirit and matter 132. 
Minerals, assimilation impossible 82. 
Moderation in food 136. 
Mongols, descendents of Atlanteans 75. 
Moons, discipline stragglers 59. 

physical vehicles of Jehovah 172. 

tumors of universe 60. 
Moses led followers through water 26. 
Motive, importance of 101. 
Mysteries, soul body teaches 136. 
Mystery schools furnish higher teaching 8. 

Nationalism must pass 112. 

Nations, rise and fall of 110. 

Negroes, descendants of Lemurians 75. 

New Galilee 135. 

New heaven and new earth, see Aquarian Age. 

New race 75. 

Niebelungen ring 42. 

Nimrod, Atlantean king 22. 

Noah 27. 

Noise, evil effects of 125. 

stirs desire bodies 126. 
Nucleus in magic practices 103. 

Orthodoxy, arguments of 46. 
Panorama etched into desire body 133. 
Passion, crystallizing power of 32. 
Periodic flow of earth 62. 
Philosophy, hidden meaning in 135. 
Physical body, see Dense body. 
Pioneers the active workers 16. 

two classes of 17. 
Pisces, creed and dogma of 81. 
Planet, body of Great Spirit 156. 

evolution of 41. 

orbit of 156, 
Poise, necessity for 125. 
Polarian had only dense body 88. 
Polarian epoch, dense body in 22. 

mineral-like state of man in 22. 
Polygamy 66. 
Possession cures desire 93. 

13 



194 Gleanings of a Mystic 

Post mortem experience 15. 

Post mortem state 16. 

Preservation, Christ principle 168. 

Progress, impossible to unworthy 150. 

Proselyting unnecessary 132. 

Providence of God 120. 

Purity, redemption of 35. 

Race spirits cause racial characteristics 109. 

high ideals of 110. 
Racial characteristics 109. 
Rainbow, advent of 27. 

emblem of diversity 70. 

entrance to new age 180. 

gates to promised land 69. 
Reconciliation ,desirability of 119. 
Recording angels give religions 7. 
Religion, happiness from 126. 
Religion given by Recording Angels 7. 

suited to nations 8. 
Religious errors, not long permitted 46. 
Responsibility not to be shirked 127. 
Resurrection, Easter Sun symbolizes 163. 
Retrospection, good gained by 184. 

importance of 18. 
Rhine Gold 42. 
Rosier ucian messengers 11. 
Sacrament, Hebrew derivation of 55. 

importance of 38. 
Sacrifice, evolution result of 97. 

soul growth from 165. 
Sanctuary, inner 124. 
Saints, 17. 
Salt, 185. 
Science becomes religious 40. 

to rule Aquarian Age 82. 
Seances, danger of 107. 
Seasons symbolize diversity 70. 
Self-Sacrifice, advancement from 38. 

of Christ 100. 
Selfishness bane of race 43. 
Separation of sexes 32. 
Service builds soul body 135. 

essential in life 135. 



Index 195 

Service (cont.) the policy that pays 118. 

redemption of stragglers 59. 
Sexes, separation of 32. 
Silence, great help in soul growth 126. 
Sin must be expiated 57. 
Sixth sense 178. 

Sleep, work during gains soul growth 129. 
Solar system body of God 59. 
Son, see Christ. 

Sorrow, keynote of Buddhism 57. 
Soul amalgamates with spirit 96. 
Soul body 54. 

from seed 73. 

light of teaches man 136. 

of new age 181. 

methods of building 80. 

protects against Black Magic 106. 

wedding garment of new age 80. 
Soul growth dissolves crystallized bodies 96. 

helps in 126. 

method of 17. 
Sound, effect of 124. - ' 

Spinal nerves, animal twenty-eight pairs of 61. 

man thirty-one pairs of 61. 
Spirit orbit of 156. 
Spiritual forces, ebb and flow of 61. 
Spiritual sight result of war 112. 
Spiritual world, time non-existent 169. 
Spring and Earth Spirit 31. 
Stellar ray 64. 

Strength, conservation of 122. 
Sugar beneficial effects of 83. 

cure of alcoholism by 84. 
Sun ascends at Easter 165. 

in Cancer, the flood 78. 

invisible vehicle of God 172. 

visible vehicle of Christ 172. 

Tact, value of 119. 
Talents of ego 15. 
Teacher of New Age 76. 
Temple, way to shown 136. 
Thought breaks down tissue 23. 






196 Gleanings of a Mystic 

Time, non-existent in spiritual world 169. 

Tolerance for our families 137. 

Tree of knowledge 32. 

Tribulation prepares for Initiation 63. 

Trinity, mystery of 167. 

Unfoldment, three stages of 55. 
Universal solvent 168. 

Vegetarianism, advantages of 91. 

Vegetarian needs no alcohol 91. 

Virgin spirits enmeshed in matter as egos 132. 

self-consciousness attained by 22. 
Vital body charges body with energy 132. 

constructive energy of 49. 

evolved by Hyperborean 22, 88. 

medium of occult growth 9. 

spiritualized by Initiation 67. 

stores up power 128. 

vehicle of love 51. 

War, spiritual aspects of 123. 

spiritual intensity of 104. 

spiritual sight result of 112. 
Water, Noah and Moses led followers through 26. 

used in Black Magic 104. 
Wedding garment, see Soul Body. 
Western Initiates more advanced 8. 
Western Mystery Teaching Christian 47. 
White Magic, unselfish 102. 
Wine, given in Atlantis 26. 

self-assertion from drinking 86. 

stimulates spirit of man 27. 
Word, cosmic meaning of 155. 
Workers, the pioneers 16. 
World, God's training school 180. 
World change to come 181. 
Worry evil of 116. 

You as pronoun 83. 



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Life and Activity in Heaven. 
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Parsifal. 

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By Max Heindel 

Faust, Parsifal, The Ring of the Niebe- 
lung, Tannhauser, Lohengrin 

The Secret Teachings concealed in the Great Myths 
as embodied in the major operas are here interpreted. 
The Evolutionary Plan and Methods of Spiritual Un- 
foldment are shown to lie hidden in the imagery of 
Folk Tales. The treatment of this subject adapts the 
book to the use of the musician and student of folk- 
lore as well as to the occultist. 

Bound in Cloth with the usual three colored 

gold covers used on all Rosicrucian 

Fellowship Books. 

$2.00 Postfree 



AN OCCULT STORY 
By Prentiss Tucker 
This is a fascinating story of a young myst'c's 
experiences during the Great War, both upon the seen 
and the unseen planes. The author possesses great 
aptitude for portraying conditions upon the super- 
physical planes so that the layman can form a con- 
crete conception regarding them. 

Published by The Rosicrucian Fellowship 

168 Pages Cloth Bound $1.50 postfree. 



Wi\t Message of i\\t ^tnxs 

Max and Augusta Heindel 

708 pp. Cloth. $3.50, Postpaid 

This book gives a complete system of reading the 
horoscope for character and the various fortunes of life. 
The progressed horoscope, and the art of prediction are 
fully dealt with. An exposition of Medical Astrology and 
a system of diagnosing disease from the horoscope, used 
for many years by the authors in their extensive and suc- 
cessful practice, are included, and also a number of articles 
on the philosophy of Astrology. The subject of Medical 
Astrology is illustrated by 36 example horoscopes. 

A new index has been added to both Natal and Medical 
Astrology. This will be invaluable to the student in 
quickly locating any desired information in either depart- 
ment. 

This book is the classic of modern Astrology. It is set 
in a most attractive style, printed on fine paper, with 
durable binding, the cover stamped in colors like other 
Rosicrucian textbooks. 



'tmpitfbb j§ri*«itftc JVstroIogg 

By Max Heindel 

Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged 

With Max Heindel's Portrait 

198 pp. Bound in Cloth. $1.50 Postpaid. 

A complete textbook on the art of erecting a horoscope, 

making the process simple and easy for beginners. It also 

includes a 

Philosophic Encyclopedia 

AND 

Tables of Planetary Hours 

The Philosophic Encyclopedia fills a long felt want of 
both beginners and advanced students for information con- 
cerning the underlying reasons for astrological dicta. It 
is a mine of knowledge arranged in such a manner as to 
be instantly accessible. 



tmpltftch jictentiftc ^pljgmm* 

I860 TO DATE, PBICE, 25c EACH YEAR 

The increasing difficulty experienced by Astrolo- 
gers in obtaining Ephemerides lias induced us to 
enter the field and produce 

A Better Ephemeris 

At Half the Price Usually Charged By Others 
The type is as large as used in this, book, the print 
is clear and beautiful. It will save eye strain. 

°0° 

SIMPLIFIED 

>cumttftt tables nf pauses 

Latitudes 25 to 60 Degrees, Inclusive 



Volume 1. Volume 2. Volume 3. 

25-36 degrees 37-48 degrees 49-60 degrees 

WITH LONGITUDES and LATITUDES 
of about 

FIFTEEN HUNDRED CITIES OF THE WORLD 
50c each volume postpaid. 



T&aOibamA 

By Augusta Foss Heindel 



This is a new lecture in our Rosicrucian Chris- 
tianity Series. It is a very interesting description of 
the soul who is earthbound after death, the conditions 
which surround him on the superphysical planes, his 
activities there, and the causes which hold him in that 
state. The dangers of the ouija board, as affording a 
field of operation for earthbound spirits, are also 
described. 

13 Pages. Paper Bound. Price 10c. 



(Sip Optical ^nterprstatton 
of (Eljratmas 



By Max Heindel 



Five dissertations in one volume, upon this most 
interesting Subject of CHRISTMAS from the Mys- 
tical Viewpoint, showing the occult significance of 
this great event. 

Atr actively Bound in Heavy Paper. $1.00 postfree. 






(Eovvtzptmbrntt (Utfitrses 



-IN- 



CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM AND ASTROLOGY 

Christian Mysticism : A correspondence course of 
twelve lessons upon the Rosicrucian Philosophy, using 
the Cosmo-Conception by Max Heindel, as a textbook. 
This philosophy gives a logical analysis of the origin, 
evolution, and future development of the world and 
man, showing both the spiritual and scientific aspects. 
It is entirely Christian, aiming to make religion a 
living factor in the world and to lead to Christ those 
who cannot reach Him by faith alone. 

This course is open to all who are interested. 

Astrology: We want to help you to help others, 
and for that reason we have instituted a correspond- 
ence course in Astrology. Astrology is to us a phase 
of religion, a Divine Science. We teach it to others on 
condition that they will not prostitute it for gain. 

Anyone who is not engaged in fortune telling or 
similar methods of commercializing spiritual knowl- 
edge may be admitted to this course. 

Address : — 

SECRETARY 



The Rosicrucian Fellowship, Oceanside, California. 



H 132 82 



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